THE BULLETIN
Number 106
Fall 1993
Contents
The Wing Dams at Snouk's Rapid: A Proto-Lock on the Mohawk River
Philip Lord, Jr.
1
Dryden Lake Recreation Area Project
Ellis E. McDowell-Loudan
8
Catlinite and Red Slate Ornaments from the Enders House Site, Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, Montgomery
County, New York
Charles L. Fisher
17
Oysters and Settlement in the Lower Hudson Valley
Hans F. Schaper
24
Redefining Iron Awls and Vent Picks
Donald A. Rumrill
37
The Wing Dams at Snouk's Rapid: A Proto-Lock on the Mohawk River
Philip Lord, Jr., New York State Museum
In the quarter century before the opening of the
Erie Canal, a private canal company improved Mohawk
River-navigation by constructing rock wing dams on
numerous rifts. The dams were patterned after eel weirs
built previously by Native American inhabitants and
others. One complex of such navigation dams, recorded in
1803, approximates in design and function a true canal
lock.
their scope. These improvements included the cutting of
thirteen short "canals" across narrow necks of land along
Wood Creek in 1793, the construction of a mile-long canal
at Little Falls in 1795, the building of a 1.7-mi canal at the
Carrying Place at Rome in 1797, a 1.1-mi canal at German
Flatts in 1798, and construction of four wooden locks on
Wood Creek in 1803.
In addition to the creation of such completely
new, artificial works, this company also undertook to
improve the natural waterways themselves, clearing trees,
rocks, and debris from the channel. In the Mohawk, the
special character of that river prompted something else to
be created, something which combined natural channel
improvements with artificial construction, and something
which, while totally new from a navigational perspective,
was based on a technology exceedingly ancient.
The Mohawk River in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries was characterized by shallow
waters whose depth fluctuated dramatically with the
seasons and whose course was obstructed by over 90
distinct rifts or rapids. These rapids ran the gamut from
mere shoals over which a boat could pass with only
moderate difficulty to minor falls of such magnitude that
boats had to be unloaded and dragged overland to continue
their passage. The most significant of these latter
obstructions was the rapid at Little Falls, so-called as a
lesser version of the great falls at Cohoes, and equally as
impassable in spite of its small size.
Many of these rapids included boulders and
rocks, while others consisted primarily of stones and
gravel tossed up into bars and shoals by the violence of the
river during periods of peak flow. Spring meltwater
"freshets," often carrying quantities of plowing ice that
scoured out portions of the riverbed or diverted the flow
around dams of ice blocks and gravel, represented the
major force at work on these channel formations.
The most impressive of the rapids could be found
immediately downstream from the inlets of numerous
streams and small rivers that intersected the Mohawk from
either side. The debris flushed into the river fro m these
streams each spring tended to be driven a short distance
downstream by the flow of the Mohawk, and then to be
thrown up into bars and islands.
This process is described with some insight in a
contemporary source.
Since prehistoric times, the Mohawk River has
been the major link in a chain of inland waterways that
reached between the upper Hudson River and the Great
Lakes. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, this
navigation network connected the Atlantic trade port at
Albany with the Great Lakes port at Oswego and permitted
the westward expansion of settlement, areas of resource
production, and markets for manufactured goods, after the
Revolution.
This transportation system was not without its
limitations, however, and during the closing decades of the
eighteenth century, these became increasingly problematic
for the developing nation and state. The necessity of a land
road between Albany and the Mohawk River port at
Schenectady to avoid the Great Cohoes Falls, the carry
around the lesser falls at Little Falls, and the Great
Carrying Place at Rome between the Upper Mohawk and
the head of navigation on Wood Creek, all produced
delays, inconvenience, and excessive cost, and severely
limited the size and capacity of the vessels used in the
system. In addition, seasonal periods of dry weather and
the numerous shallows present in these inland waterways
restricted the length of the navigation season, often
unpredictably, thus placing at risk the profitability of any
inland shipping and forwarding enterprise.
All this difficulty was resolved with the building
of the Erie Canal, completed in 1825, which joined the
Atlantic port at Albany with the Great Lakes port at
Buffalo with one, continuous slack-water channel designed
to both insure and prolong the navigability of the inland
route. Today, the modem Barge Canal, built in the
1920s,performs the same function, following for most of
its alignment east of Rome the old Mohawk Valley
corridor of the eighteenth century, often utilizing the river
itself, just as did the bateaumen over 200 years ago.
However, the building of the Erie Canal in
1825didnotmark the true beginnings of the era of artificial
channel navigation. A quarter century earlier, a private
enterprise, The Western Inland Lock Navigation
Company, undertook improvement of the natural
waterways by constructing artificial ones which were
substantial as engineering experiments if yet modest in
May 18. 1794... I observed along our route, that
the rapids were all formed at the mouths of
creeks. by the stones and -ravel, which these
streams when swollen and overflowed by the
melting of the snows, sweep into the river, where
they pile up and form bars. These can not be
carried away by the
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improved and more profitable commerce and transport are
main current of the river, since, as the water
analogous as well. Being up to 60 ft long and only 8 ft
subsides, the force of the current is lessened, and
wide, such vessels could carry over 12 tons while drawing
soon ceases to move these materials further. The
less then 2 ft of water fully loaded (Figure 1).
formation of islands is due to the same cause.
They begin by rapids, which bring down new
To accommodate these larger vessels, and to
deposits of rocks, gravel and sand each year,
ext end the navigation season for these as well as the
which gradually heap up to the level of low
smaller bateaux, the Western Inland Lock Navigation
water, and finally of high water, when plants and
Company undertook the construction of "wing dams" at
aquatic shrubs find root and grow. These form a
lodgement for mud and sand, which every
several of the shallower rapids in the Mohawk River.
freshet brings down, and for these reasons we
These dams consisted of little more than lines of rocks,
always find islands at the foot of the rapids of
taken directly from the rapids on which the dams were to
rivers, and below the mouths of creeks. The
be constructed, and piled up to form a "V" in the riverbed,
rapids and islands are always proportioned to the
force and volume of the confluent waters
with a gap at the apex. This V-dam had its openings facing
[Pitcher 1985:56-57].
upstream and was built high enough to contain the water
that normally flowed over the rift. As passage for the
These deposits either forced the river over such shallows
largest boats in service on the Mohawk at that time only
that passage became difficult, or divided the channel into
required 24 in of water, a dam of less than three ft in
so many minor courses that none was of sufficient depth to
height would be more than adequate to the purpose. In
carry a vessel.
letters transmitted to Albany during his field survey of the
The principal craft plying the Mohawk during the
Mohawk River in 1803, Benjamin Wright suggests a
late eighteenth century were bateaux of between one and
height of only "12 or 16 inches and "16 or 18 inches" for
two tons capacity, about 30 ft long and 5 ft wide. These
some of the new wing dams he recommends to improve
flat-bottomed boats had pointed ends and flaring sides, as
several Mohawk River rifts (Wright 1803a). As the normal
well as a raking bow and stem, all designed to provide lift
depth of water at the rapids to be improved was, therefore.
over the rapids. Propelled by poles and oars, or sails if
under 18 in, one can visualize how easily workers at the
conditions permitted, and steered by a long oar at the stern,
rift could stand in knee-deep water to draw and pile the
such boats required only a few inches of water to navigate.
rock for these constructions.
Late in the eighteenth century, and more prominently
The effect of these wing dams was simply to
during the pre-Erie decades of the nineteenth century, a
force water that was normally widely distributed across the
larger craft of essentially the same basic design began
surface of perhaps a 200-ft broad rapid into a central gap,
extending its range westward from the boatyards of
often no more than 10 ft wide. The resulting swell could
Schenectady toward the ultimate goal of the Great Lakes.
raise the water level significantly. In addition, as the bow
The "Durham boat" was to the bateau what the 18-wheeler
of the boat, running upstream, was drawn
is to a pick-up truck today and the implications for
Figure 1. This 1810 engraving captures an eyewitness image of a Durham boat passing one of the Mohawk wing dams in
1807.
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Fall 1993 No. 106
left to admit the passage of a boat. The water
being thus collected at the widest part of these
ridges, and continually pent up within narrower
limits as it descends, causes a rise at the passage:
so that where the depth was no more than eight
inches before, a contrivance of this kind will
raise it to twelve; and, strange as it may appear, a
boat drawing fifteen inches will pass through it
with safety and ease. The cause is simply this;
the boat, being somewhat below the passage, is
brought forward with considerable velocity, and
the moment it dashes into the passage, its
resistance to the current is such as to cause a
swell of four or five inches more, which affords
it an easy passage over the shoal [Schultz
1810:7-8].
into the gap at the downstream apex of the "V," the water
passing the gap would swell an additional amount, thus giving
ample float for passage. Running downstream, with the
current, a swell would also occur, although the maximum lift
would probably not occur until the boat was well into the gap.
In design, these navigation dams adapted a
technology almost as ancient as the river itself, namely that of
the aboriginal, and later colonial, fish trap or "weir." Such fish
traps were not only similar in design and construction to the
navigation dams but they apparently coexisted with them on
the same river. Wright records some sort of linear rock dams
on 12 of the 91 discrete rapids he maps in 1803. Only one set
of these is labeled as a navigational "wing dam," 3 others are
probable wing dams, 3 (or more correctly , 3 sets of dams) are
labeled "eel wares" and an additional 5 (again sets of dams)
can be assumed to be eel or fish traps (Wright 1803b).
If we compare two contemporary descriptions of
these weirs with a description of the navigation dams, we can
readily see similarity.
It would seem that the only difference in design
between these two types of river rift construction would be
that those built for navigation had the gap left open for
passage, while those built for harvesting fish had a basket or
other container inserted into the gap. It would seem that either
dam type could function as a navigation aid, and one might
imagine more than one frustrated boatman driving his vessel
through the basket of eels at the end of a strategically placed
weir when no other passage could be seen. It is possible,
however, that the navigation dams were built more watertight,
as their purpose was to create a pool of deeper water above
the dam, while the eel weir needed only to deflect the
migrating fish toward the trap at the end of the dam, letting
excess water pour freely between the rocks.
It is noteworthy that on several of the dammed
rapids recorded by Wright in 1803, the navigation channel,
designated by a dashed line and the word "channel," avoided
these "eel wares" and followed what must often have been a
lesser flow of the river to avoid entanglement in the fish traps.
One early account states:
These waters abound in catfish, salmon, bass,
eel, and corperals, all very fine, and fat. They are
caught in eel weires, formed by the Indians thus:Two walls of loose stones are thrown up,
obliquely descending across the river, to a point,where they are taken, at a small opening, in
baskets, or eel pots [Watson 1820:39].
Eels are found here in the greatest abundance,
and are the finest and largest that ever I saw.
They have an invention for taking them similar
to our eel-pots, but made very, large, and
requiring no bait. These are always set in a
strong current, either at the inlet or outlet of a
lake, or on some swift part of the stream upon
the rivers. Two ridges of stones arc piled up in
the manner before described on the Mohawk
river, at the lower end of which the pot or basket
is set. I was present when one of the baskets,
which had been set over night, was taken up: it
filled two barrels, and the greater part of the eels
weighed from two to three pounds each [Schultz
1810:21].
A log house occupies the site of the fort, and its
occupant has piled up stones and gravel in a triangular form, almost entirely across the river,
and at the point is a opening where there is
fastened a willow basket called an eel weier.
These structures almost entirely destroy the
navigation, and although forbidden, yet in these
wilds there are none to see that the laws are
carried into effect [Hough n.d.:7 ].
The Mohawk is by no means dangerous to
ascend, on account of the slowness of the boat's
progress: but , as it is full of rocks, stones and
shallows, there is some risk in descending it of
staving the boat: and, at this season, is so low as
to require it to be dragged by hand over many
places. The channel in some instances is not
more than eight feet in width, which will barely
permit a boat to pass by rubbing on both sides.
This is sometimes caused by natural or
accidental obstructions of rocks in the channel:
but oftener by artificial means. This, which at
first view would appear to be an inconvenience,
is produced by two lines or ridges of stone
generally constructed on sandy, gravelly, or
stony shallows. in such a manner as to form an
acute angle were they to meet , the extremities
of" which widen as they extend up the river;
whilst at the lower end there is just space enough
Navigational wing dams were probably initially built
in the Mohawk channel by the Western Inland Lock
Navigation Company (1792-1821) as one of their earliest
endeavors. While it seems reasonable to expect that some
application of this technique may even predate that company,
it appears not to be the case. The first report of the company,
made after a 1792 survey of the river, states: "Several of the
rapids might be deepened by erecting small stone dams,
nearly across the river, leaving a passage for boats..."
(O'Callaghan 1850:1091).
A nineteenth-century regional history, in
recapitulating the evolution of eighteenth-century, Mohawk
River navigation, also
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appears to confirm the identification of these constructions with
the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company.
In the riffs a channel was made by
throwing out boulders which were in the way. In
time the line of deepest water became defined
and all the riffs came to be named and were land
marks in the itineraries of travelers. The efforts
of the boatmen during a century were furthered
by the "Inland Lock and Navigation Company,"
which built a series of wing dams on all the riffs.
They were usually crude affairs and intended
only to serve their office in low water. These
wing dams-collections of stone which were
dragged from the channel and arranged in the
shape of a V, the wings stretching over the
shallow from the shore to the centre, where there
was a narrow outlet. The effect of this was to
throw what water there was into the centre of the
stream and float the boat. Then by dint of wind
and muscle-sail and poles, and men towing at a
long line, the boat was hauled over the rapid into
stiller water again and so pursued her joumey
[Pearson 1883:423].
Figure 2. A p ortion of Wright's 1803 survey.
rock dams can be seen, labeled in three places "Wing Dam." This
is the only place on the Mohawk River where Wright uses the
term "wing dam," a term specifically attributed to navigation
structures in use at that time.
In his letter reports, written during the field survey for
his 1803 map series, Wright describes verbally numerous details
about existing features in the channel, among these the various
rock dams illustrated on the maps. For only one of these is some
chronological context given, and fortuitously for the very
complex of dams we are discussing. "Near Mr. Snouks the Cl.
Company formed some dams some time ago. The upper one
ought to be lengthened considerable and the lower ones the
channel cleared out so as to make deeper water and draw more
current this way" (Wright 1803a) (Figure 3).
It is very probable that these are the same dams noted
in a report prepared by Philip Schuyler the year before. III
surveying the stretch of river "between Schohara Creek and
Schenectady," he makes reference to "the wing dams made in
1799" and suggests that these "require to be compleated and
several others made which were then not attempted" (Schuyler
1802).
Although it is rendered with minute and somewhat
sketchy inkwork, we can reconstruct the structure created here by
the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company and recorded by
Wright in 1803. The system of dams appears to take advantage of
the natural north bank of the river as well as a small rock or
gravel bar at the upstream end of a cluster of islands. The first
(moving downstream) wing dam extends into the broad natural
channel to capture and deflect flow into the navigation channel
north of the rocky bar. Why the dam was not extended
completely across the river to divert all of the flow into the
navigation channel is not clear. Apparently Wright was puzzled
by this as well as he states that this dam "ought to be lengthened
considerable..."
Passing northward of this dam and the rocky bar, one
next encounters a typical V-dam like that described in early
accounts. A short distance further downstream a second, almost
identical, V-dam is encountered, but this one having the hint of a
downstream extension below the gap. An unmistakable line of
rocks connects the two V-dams in a line parallel to the shore and
defines
We know that as late as 1803 discussions for continued
improvements of the Mohawk rapids by the building of new
dams, or the expansion of existing ones, were still underway. The
somewhat informal nature of these works, being less of an
engineering feat and requiring less material or human resources
than actual canals and locks, seems to have mitigated against the
detailed recording of the completion of these dams, and the
historic record suffers from lack of their documentation.
The best evidence we have for the location and design
of these wing dams and the scope of this type of Mohawk
channel improvement project remains the series of maps of the
Mohawk River created by Benjamin Wright in 1803. Wright was
commissioned to make a survey of the Mohawk Valley,
recording existing features and identifying a potential route for
the construction of the proposed Erie Canal. As the most
advantageous alignment for that canal lay in proximity to the
Mohawk River, Wright's survey encompasses the entirety of the
river and records in some detail the terrain adjacent to the river.
Although it was not essential to his task of plotting a land route
for the new canal, W right has taken pains to record all the rocks,
rapids, and channel obstructions in the Mohawk from
Schenectady to Rome. On a number of these rapids he has drawn
and identified various types of low rock dams (Figure 2).
On map "No. 5" of the series, Wright illustrates 4 mi of
the Mohawk channel from about one mile above the Schoharie
Creek junction to about 3 mi below. Almost dead center within
this drawing we see a chain of islands of various sizes around
which the Mohawk braids its channel for over a mile. Certainly
such a division of the channel must have reduced the depth of
water in any one of the passages much below what would have
been required for navigation, and the presence of rapids and
shoals here appears to confirm that.
In what appears to be the main channel, and across a
rapid opposite a pair of buildings attributed to a "Snouk." a
complex of
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Fall 1993 No. 106
Figure 3. This site plan reveals the wing dam complex opposite
Snouk's homestead on the lower Mohawk.
Figure 4. A lock on the Erie Canal, c. 1830.
the deep water channel along the edge of a shoal to the south.
Since it is unlikely there would be a desire to deflect water
coming across this shoal away from the navigation channel, we
can only assume the function of this wall was to prevent water
already diverted into that channel from spilling away to the
southward between the two V-dams.
This linear dam may have been nothing more than an
artifact of the removal of rocks from the proposed navigation
channel, much as a farmer creates stone walls from field-clearing
activities. However, it would have functioned, by intent or de
facto, as a retaining wall, helping to maintain the pool being
created above the lower V-dam by preventing lateral spillage. In
essence, then, a "chamber" has been created in which a pool of
water is being contained, or more correctly, detained. That
chamber is bounded on the north by the riverbank, on the south
by the rock wall joining the two V-dams, and on the east and
west by those dams themselves (Figure 4).
In this configuration we may be seeing a primitive
version of a canal lock, both in terms of design and function. A
true canal lock conducts the vessel from high to low water, or
vice versa, through three flat water levels, the middle one
moveable, controlled by two completely closeable gates that
alternately stop the flow. These locks are usually positioned at or
adjacent to the sites of falls or rapids in the natural river, where a
descending terrain causes the water to fall at an unacceptable
pitch for navigation.
The lock structure in effect throws a dam across the
stream, creating a slack-water pool that is at the height of the
upstream end of the rapid. Below the lock structure the river
continues to run at the level of the downstream end of the rapid,
fed by flow over the dam spillway. Vessels are conducted
between these two levels by the raising and lowering of water
within the lock chamber-in effect an intermediary slack-water
pool-controlled by the coordinated opening and closing of the
watertight gates at either end of the chamber.
The "proto-lock" construction, represented by the wing
dam complex at Snouk's rapid, conducts the vessel across the rift
through two open-ended, partially slack-water, pools, main
tained as swells behind incompletely closed walls or dams.
Because the proto-lock structure has no moving parts, it must
remain open at the apex of each dam in order to afford the boats
passage. Instead of two fixed levels at either end of the rapid, as
in a true lock, with the middle one raised or lowered to match the
end level wanted, the dam complex uses these swells to produce a
series of intermediate levels through which the boat passes, thus
dividing an otherwise steep and shallow rapid into a stepped
series of sloping pools.
Details on surviving rock dams are rare for New York
State waters, and virtually nonexistent for the Mohawk River
after about 1820. Some historic eel weirs on other rivers in New
York State (Figures 5 and 6) have survived long enough to be
measured and suggest a construction technique that involved
building a compound of interconnected or immediately adjacent
V-dams spanning the river from bank to bank. If we look on
Wright's map, just upstream from the wing dam complex at
Snouk's, we see just such a configuration.
Except by extrapolation from Wright's maps, precise
dimensional data are sorely lacking. The average length for each
arm of one non-Mohawk New York weir, observed in 1890 and
believed to be fairly typical, was cited as 200 ft with a dam height
of only 2 ft (Powell 1894:549). Another such weir, mapped by
Wright in 1803, still existed on the Mohawk at the Caughnawaga
Rift near Fonda as late as 1890, when it shows up in a drawing by
Rufus Grider (Grider 1900:19), but no data are given nor is it
even identified for what it was.
However, a reconnaissance of the Potomac River in
Virginia, made twenty years after Wright's Mohawk survey,
preserves for us very detailed descriptions of several navigation
dams and mentions the employment of parallel walls to line the
channel below the V-dam, a structural configuration suggested by
Wright's sketchy drawing of the Snouk's rift area. As these
Potomac constructions are already being described as "ruins" in
1823, we may assume they are contemporaneous with the late
eighteenth-century dams of the Mohawk.
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Figure 5. The Hick's family eel weir on the Delaware River. October 1992.
Figure 6. Abandoned eel weir on the Delaware River similar in scale to the Mohawk River dams of 1803.
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Fall 1993 No. 106
They consist in low dams running across from shore
to shore, elevated about 18 inches or two feet from the bottom
and made of rounded stone picked up out of the bed of the
river, of a size that a man can conveniently handle, the greater
part not larger than a man's head, and raised on a broad basis
of from ten to twenty feet in width. This transverse low wall
or dam is usually connected with two walls about the same
height, but built on a narrower basis of from six to eight feet
placed parallel to each other, and to the shores, at the distance
of 20 feet from each other, through which passage, by a gap in
the transverse dam, it is intended to force the current of the
river and to deepen the waters by collecting it into this
artificial channel. The number of these transverse walls,
connected as stated, with 20 feet sluices on the river, is very
great, but it was not thought necessary to count them. Indeed,
in such a state of ruin were the greater part of them found that
they were difficult to be distinguished from the numerous fish
dams found along the whole course of the river [Briggs
1823:10].
Surviving in an environment free of the erosive
impact of spring ice flows, many of these early Potomac
River dams can still be seen today, and so afford an
opportunity for modem study long since lost in the Mohawk
channel.
A 1969 archeological study of "fish traps" on the
Potomac (Strandberg and Tomlinson 1969:312-319) provides
a detailed look at 36 surviving examples of this technology.
Unfortunately this is a "photo-archaeological" study, relying
on aerial photographs without field reconnaissance, so we do
not have data on the heights of dams or the size of stones used
in construction. We do have data on dam length and find that
most had wings that were less than 200 ft in length, with some
being less than 100 ft long. Because the author provides no
insights into the possibility that sonic of these "fish traps"
may have been remnant navigation works, and in fact does
not even suggest knowledge of such possibility, we cannot
know if we are seeing the modern survivors of this earliest of
navigation aids.
The dam complex at Snouk's rift drawn by Wright
has wing dams built on a comparable scale to those cited
above, being each less than 200 ft long. To some extent this
length is controlled by the narrowing of the channel here,
imposed by a substantial rocky bar opposite Snouk's
establishment.
In plan and scale this complex appears to be a
gargantuan precursor of the wood and stone lock structures
being built by the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company
during the last decade of the eighteenth and first decade of the
nineteenth centuries. Such locks had an average chamber
length of 72 ft and width of 12 ft, while the "chamber" of the
"proto-lock" at Snouk's rapid is approximately 858 ft long by
165 ft wide. While this structure is about 12 times larger than
the true locks being built by the company, the ratio of length
to width in both cases is about 6 to l.
Whether this late eighteenth-century double windam complex at Snouk's rapid represents some sort of
primitive application of true lock technology or merely
exhibits a coincidental design, it remains possibly the earliest
and most interesting example of this type of navigational aid
in New York's inland waters, if not in all of the Northeast, and
certainly the best documented of its class.
References Cited
Briggs. Isaac
1823
A Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Survey the
River Potomac. Gales & Seaton, Washington, D.C.
Grider, Rufus
1900
The Rufus Grider Notebooks. Vol. 11. New York
State Library, Albany.
Hough, Franklin, translator
n.d.
Journal of Castorland. New York State Library,
Albany.
O'Callaghan, E.B., editor
1850
Documentary History of the State of Near York. Vol.
III. Weed, Parsons & Co., Albany.
Pearson, Jonathan
1883
A History of the Schenectady
Munsell's Sons, Albany.
Patent.
Joel
Pilcher. Edith
1985
Castorland. Harbor Hill Books. Harrison, New York
Powell, J.W.
1894
Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.
Government Printing Office. Washington. D.C.
Schultz, Christian
1810
Travels on an Inland Voyage ... Isaac
Riley. New York.
Schuyler, Philip
1802
Report, August 18. The Schuyler Papers, Letters Sent,
1802. New York Public Library. New York.
Strandberg, Carl H. and Ray Tomlinson
1969
Photoarchaeological Analysis of Potomac River Fish
Traps. American Antique 34 (3):312-319.
Watson, Elkanah
1820
History of the Rise, Progress, and Existing Condition of
the Western Canals in the State New York. D. Steele, Albany.
Wright, Benjamin
1803a
Letter No. 2 to Barent Bleeker, August 11. The
Schuyler Papers, Letters Received. 1803. New York
Public Library. New York.
1803b
Survey and Level of Mohawk Rive in 1803.
Oneida Historical Society. Utica.
7
Dryden Lake Recreation Area Project
Ellis L. McDowell-Loudan, Department of Sociology-Anthropology, SUNY College at Cortland
The Town of Dryden, Tompkins County, New
York, was awarded a New York State Parks grant fo r
development of a multi-purpose park on the west end of
Dryden Lake. Archaeological study, as part of the
requirements for receipt of the grant, was carried out in
1989, thro ugh SUNY College at Cortland. This cultural
resource study was a cooperative effort between the
college archaeological field school, cultural resources
contracting personnel, and members of the Dryden
community. Location of a prehistoric archaeological site
and protection of it through modification of park plans
demonstrated the value of close interaction and
cooperation between archaeological personnel and
planners of the town and village involved. Paid and
voluntary support from State personnel, historical
societies, Scouting personnel, and other community
members illustrate what can be accomplished with
relatively limited funds.
outside the discipline of anthropology. From time to time
the public has found fault with the regulations and with
their implementation. Professional, popular, and
newspaper reports criticize the existing regulations and
guidelines. Reports of such work, generated by
archaeologists for the agencies hiring them, may be
meager-looking or lacking in any "important
archaeological finds," while at the same time, they may
have cost as much as other reports that have presented
information on "significant archaeological finds."
From within anthropology, archaeologists who do
not undertake cultural resource contract projects in some
cases perceive their colleagues who do as less research
oriented or less concerned for archaeological research
questions as the focus of their studies. Preparing a
sampling design to fit State or Federal guidelines for a
project area that consists of many miles of a narrow
corridor of land may be the requirement for a contract
project. The search is for potential cultural resources of
any and all types that are present and that might have
significance and cultural integrity. Significance and
cultural integrity are judged by the State or Federal
personnel whose job is to make that determination rather
than by the archaeologist who has provided the evidence.
The contracting archaeologist provides only the data,
following guidelines prepared by others, and any
determination of site significance will depend upon that
researcher's skill in reporting and the ability to provide
convincing proof of the site's eligibility for National
Register nomination.
Generation and application of any and all research
questions in this setting will be dependent upon this factor
as determined by set criteria and set evaluators. The
decision about archaeological importance and site value, as
well as the fate of the site itself, will he in the hands of
those in the governmental office where determinations of
eligibility are made, not in the hands of the contract
archaeologist.
Despite often grandiose research and sampling
designs, a project area, or series of them may yield
negative results from the standpoint of many people. Time
and money went into the project, yet there are no
sensational new cultural resources to report. There are no
outstanding new contributions to the understanding of the
human past to share. Contracting firms may heave a sigh
of relief; archaeologists may be able to complete their
project reports without the agony of controversies over
artifact repositories, plans for follow-up studies, or
concerns about how mitigation of impact on the sites they
found will fit their preferences. The construction project
may proceed without a hitch. However,
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to show an approach
to cultural resource management that might be applied in a
variety of contexts. It offers ways to use project
methodology and results to educate the public about what
contract archaeologists do, how they do it, why they do it,
and how the results benefit everyone on both the short
term and long term.
While this particular case study, the Dryden Lake
Recreation Project, located in the Town of Dryden.
Tompkins County, New York, is not the only project in
which these kinds of per sonnet and methods have been
used, it serves as an example of a project that gained
positive publicity and public interest. The interest was
from diverse angles and has continued to generate cultural
resource-related concern. Because of the level of local
public attention, cultural resource factors have remained in
the forefront of on-going plans of the Town of Dryden to
expand their recreation area and to consider such resources
as they plan other types of projects within the Village of
Dryden and the Town of Dryden.
Cultural resource management has stirred up
controversy among those required by law to include
archaeological studies in their project proposals. It is
controversial within government, at local, state, regional,
and national levels, where personnel must understand and
deal with the regulations for such project studies.
Professional archaeologists who undertake contract
projects of this type, as well as professional archaeologists
who do not do so have encountered numerous questions
and ethical issues about them from one another and from
8
Fall 1993 No. 106
those who begrudge the costs of such studies or requirements for
them may express frustration about such expenditures or
contempt for regulations that force them to have a study like this
done at all. To find no cultural resources that require
consideration may seem to them a waste of money and time for
frivolous purposes.
The project reports, fulfilling the guidelines of the
regulations set by Federal and State agencies, tend to be
somewhat uninspiring reading matter. While many, if not all,
may be available for public study, the procedures to gain access,
the format of the reports, and the publicity or lack of it may limit
their distribution. Sometimes this suggests suppression of
information about a project. On occasion, there may be efforts to
downplay results of a study or the nature of the project itself.
This may be due to potential problems of site vandalism or to
legal aspects of a project, including land ownership or procedures
for land acquisition.
Whatever the factors, cultural resource management
project reports do not achieve wide public readership. Indeed,
they are not acquired very easily by other contractors in some
instances (Patterson 1992). Sometimes this problem of access has
been written into a contract and relates to the ownership of data
until the final report and its parent environmental impact report
have gone through channels and have received governmental
approval. Sharing information in the interim, without permission
of those involved, may be irresponsible. From the outside, it may
seem like concealment of public information.
If the reports are of limited readership, and/or if they
indicate that no cultural resources have been located during the
project, are they of limited significance to archaeology and to the
general public? Answers to this question vary. Archaeologists
assert that negative evidence for human activity in an area tells
something about the environment, the needs and desires of the
humans who may have been in the vicinity, the historic situation,
the nature of the sampling system used to make the determination
that nothing is present, the nature of the project area or study
area, and chance. As more and more parcels of land are modified,
opportunities for gathering information diminish. Not all
modifications are preceded by any archaeological consideration,
no matter what the archaeological potentials of the tract of land
may be.
To decrease the extent and speed of natural and cultural
resource loss. State and Federally funded projects have been
placed under the protection of an assortment of laws and
regulatory guidelines. Once in place and once applied, those
affected by the legislation may react differently from the way
they responded earlier to hypothetical examples of the value of
such requirements.
Complaints about the regulations and the cultural
resource reports that are products of these may be valid in some
instances. Report circulation, not to mention concern that vital
research data present in project reports may languish
undisseminated in a governmental file, are problems that need to
be addressed.
There have been a number of efforts to do something
about some of these difficulties. The New York Archaeological
Council (1985-1986), an organization of professional
archaeologists in New York State, has worked with the State
Historic Preservation Office to compile a bibliography of contract
reports prepared for in-state projects. This document has been
updated from time to time and is sold to anyone who wishes to
acquire it. Access has been limited by the lack of publicity about
it, partially the result of meager funding for advertising. The
Council and State personnel have provided some advertising
through their networks with project engineers, historical
societies, and other local or regional organizations within New
York State.
A file of archaeological sites located by Council
members during contract projects and of sites volunteered for
inclusion by others was generated for New York State. In the
initial stages of this project, 1974-1980, there was some
enthusiasm and mutual cooperation. As more cultural resource
management contracting developed, problems of site protection
and site information access increased as did costs of information
exchange. Personnel with special interest in this computerized
system moved out of state, and the system reverted to a regional
or institutional one, not a statewide one.
Other Council projects included a student research
paper prize to be awarded annually for a student paper based on
cultural resource project data. This award was an effort to
demonstrate potential broad applications of data gained from
such projects. College student participation and usage of these
data were viewed as useful for their training and for broadening
the ways in which contract information could be applied in
research.
A statewide U.S. Geological Survey quadrangle map
sampling study of archaeological resources was undertaken,
under joint sponsorship of the New York Archaeological Council
and the New York State Division for Historic Preservation
(McDowell-Loudan and Loudan 1977a), to document all known
prehistoric cultural resources within specific quadrangles across
the state. This was part of a State Plan for better understanding
and management of cultural resources. Its purpose was to suggest
directions for broadening the database and protecting cultural
resources at the State level.
In 1992, the Council, in cooperation with other groups
including the New York State Museum and Science Service and
the State Historic Preservation Office, instituted an annual
Archaeology Week. All across New York State, archaeologists
presented public talks, tours, and workshops on cultural resource
management projects and other archaeological topics. One
purpose was to demonstrate what archaeologists do and why.
Some of the programs were geared to dissemination of
information gathered in contract projects carried out in the region
in which the program was given. They offered people the
Opportunity to comment and question those who had been
involved in such projects, while showing that there were no
attempts to hide the results of such studies.
Programs of this type have become more and more
common in areas where cultural resource contracting has
generated controversies and interest. They have served as a
means for showing what the public can gain from this type of
work and how the information gathered can be integrated into
school classes, historical society offerings, public programs, and
even tourist attractions. The Dryden Lake Recreation Area
project is an example of this kind of application.
9
The Bulletin
Case Study: Dryden Lake Recreation Area
After several years of planning and preparation, the
Town of Dryden, located in the center of New York State in
eastern Tompkins County, was awarded a New York State Parks
grant in 1988. Through partial funding by the State, this type of
grant assists communities with the modification of their land for a
variety of public uses. In the case of the Town of Dryden, the
proposed recreational area has been planned as a multi-staged
one. Funding from the State in 1988 was limited to monies for
two segments of land, referred to as Parcel A and Parcel B,
located on the west shore of Dryden Lake. A third segment,
Parcel C. is adjacent to these and is located across West Lake
Road from the other two on State Land (McDowell-Loudan and
Loudan 1989). The parks grants are awarded and administered by
the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation.
Plans for Dryden's recreation area included the creation
of nature trails: the upgrading of an existing boat ramp; the
construction of ball fields: the addition of picnic, rest room, trash
collection, and parking facilities; and the installation of signs that
would inform visitors of what they might find. Of interest to the
Town of Dryden planners were archaeological sites, both
prehistoric and historic, as potential features for their park.
The two parcels of land involved in the first phases of
the project consisted of 35 acres of woodland, swamp, open
brush. lake shore, and badly eroded, rocky, sparsely vegetated
hillsides. In one area at the southernmost edge of the park,
remnants of an abandoned railroad bed bear mute testimony to
changing transportation needs of the area (Lee 1977:56: Palmer
1974:30-31).The bed is that of the 1869 Southern Central which
was later taken over by Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1895, only to
be leased to the New York State Department of Transportation
for Conrail usage in more recent times. Today, the tracks are
gone, and the railroad bed near Dryden Lake and extending into
the Village of Dryden is ash-, mud-, and weed-filled. The Dryden
park planning group hopes to develop the railroad bed as a bike
trail eventually connecting the Village to the park itself. This they
perceive as an attractive addition to the recreational facilities and
to the recognition of the railroad beds history.
Presently, access to the park is possible from East and
West Lake roads. There are dirt trails in some portions of the two
parcels, some of which the Town hopes to improve for more
environmentally sound usage. Trails in areas that are being
damaged by trail bikes or motorized vehicles may be modified to
discourage that activity.
A major focus of the Parks grant proposal is the
protection of the native vegetation in certain areas of the project
area. Development of trails for instructional purposes where a
variety of microenvironments can he observed is part of the plan.
Under New York State law, a State-funded project of
this type must include an archaeological evaluation. This study
must be carried out before modification of the project area
occurs, and it must be evaluated by State personnel in advance of
the actual park construction activities.
M cDowell-Loudan was contacted by Michael Lane,
Mayor of Dryden, Gina Prentiss, Dryden Historical Society, and
Thomas Niederkorn, Planning and Environmental Research
Consultants, to arrange for this archaeological study. In 1989,
under contract with the Town of Dryden and with the
administrative support of the State University of New York
Research Foundation, Cortland College Office, McDowellLoudan and Loudan executed a Phase I Reconnaissance and
Literature Search for Archaeological Potential, as required by
New York State Law. Following guidelines for such
archaeological studies, checks of State and local sources of data
and a surface and subsurface field inspection were carried out to
determine what archaeological resources might be present.
Contacts with personnel in Dryden and elsewhere in
Tompkins County had been made during earlier research for
contract projects and for work related to research in adjacent
Cortland County. Among these earlier projects were a literature
search for sewer expansion in the neighboring Village of Lansing
(McDowell-Loudan and Loudan 1977b), a Town of Lansing
housing development literature search and reconnaissance
(McDowell-Loudan 1988), and a multi-stage archaeological
study for sewer expansions in the Town of Dryden (McDowellLoudan and Loudan 1981-1984).
In 1985, as part of an archaeological presentation for
the Dryden Historical Society, an informal inventory of
artifactual materials found by local collectors was compiled. The
information gained during that meeting served as an aid to this
new project. Requirements for the archaeological report that must
be submitted to New York State, include a Report for
Archaeological Potential and a Report of Field Reconnaissance as
outlined by the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation in 1985. If archaeological sites are located, there
are forms for reporting the sites which are submitted to the New
York State Museum and Science Service, Office of Archaeology,
as well as to the New York State Division of Historic
Preservation.
To carry out the necessary field work for the Dryden
Lake Recreation Area project, McDowell-Loudan and Loudan
worked with one paid crew member to make a 35-acre walking
inspection and preliminary plan for appropriate subsurface
sampling intervals. The goal was to determine what subsurface
testing units would provide maximal coverage and efficiency of
study for this tract of land. Town of Dryden personnel, including
Historical Society members, the Village Mayor, and the Town
Supervisor, were enthusiastic about McDowell-Loudan's
supplementary plan to incorporate this project into her 1989
archaeological field school training project. This arrangement
offered the opportunity to provide wider coverage of the
subsurface areas tested, while keeping to a minimum the funding
that would be required to gain this coverage. A major purpose of
the development of this recreation area was to broaden outdoor
facilities for instruction and recreational activities. The idea of
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Fall 1993 No. 106
on-site archaeological study, providing the opportunity for
local elementary and secondary schools to observe what
occurred and contributing to the SUNY College at Cortland's
Field School in Archaeology for no additional cost to the
Town, was well received. Since this contributed
supplementary materials that went beyond the minimal
guidelines required by the State, the Town of Dryden was
delighted to agree to this mutually beneficial plan of research.
A literature search and survey of all known
repositories of data yielded one known archaeological site
thought to be located within the project area's 35 acres.
Despite all the fascination about the site and its reputation as
Dryden's major archaeological Native American site, little
specific information could be located. Many of those who
were said to have known about the site were deceased.
Records and artifacts collected by people like Cornell
University's Erl Bates, an ethnologist from the 1930s and
1940s, appear to have been lost in a fire in facilities housing
the now defunct Southern Cayuga Lake Archaeology Society
(Robert DeOrio 1977, personal communication).
The only existing information, including that on file
at the New York State Museum, is found on the 1938 New
York State marker located beside West Lake Road, south of
the bridge over the Dryden Lake outlet. The marker states:
"Indian Camp: Hunting and Fishing Grounds on Dryden
Lake. Arrows, Sinkers and Flint Abound in Great Numbers."
Robert E. Funk, Senior Scientist at the New York State
Museum, stated that files for this site and those with similar
markers in Cortland County of the same general dates , appear
to have been destroyed in a fire in Albany's facilities. The
artifactual materials that were in that repository were lost as
well (Funk 1977 and 1989, personal communication).
Another mystery surfaced when McDowellLoudan's memory of the location of the historic marker
appeared to be faulty. In 1989, when a windshield survey of
the project area and vicinity was undertaken, the marker was
not where it was remembered to have been in the 1970s.
Indeed. it was located in an area almost 0.5 mi south and west
of the remembered spot. Despite numerous inquiries, it was
not until the Fall of 1989, after the Dryden Lake Recreation
Area report had been submitted, that it was learned that a
local farmer had moved the marker to stop people for
tramping around in his fields as they surface collected
artifacts from the site. The new sign location was on the edge
of a swampy dumping area which discouraged trespassing and
bore no visible connection with the archaeological site itself.
Fortunately, the field school students and contract
crew had located evidence of prehistoric activities in the field
adjacent to the earlier placement of the marker, right where
McDowell Loudan had remembered it to be. It was in this
northwestern segment of the project area, the one designated
Parcel A, that the 1989 SUNY College at Cortland
Archaeology Field School centered its study.
The site, 35 TO 20, consists of most of the cornfield
at the northeastern end of the project area in Parcel A. Starting
at East Lake Road, at an elevation of about 1,190 ft above
mean sea level, the field slopes south toward the lake. Current
plowing patterns expose an irregular rectangle, approximately
650 ft north-south by 450 ft east-west. In the northwestern
quarter of the field, there are spots where water bubbles out of
the ground. From these spots, water drains west and south into
a swamp, creating erosion channels in the field along the
route. The northern one-sixth of the field is rocky and fairly
flat and yielded fewer artifacts than did areas to the south. To
the east and south, an area was mechanically stripped to the
surface of the subsoil. This stripped area of the site
corresponded with the locations of buried pits. The prestripping surface elevation in that area was about 1,180-1.185
ft above mean sea level. To the south, the remaining section
of the field was systematically surface collected in an effort to
determine the locations of artifact concentrations. In this area,
plowing tended to be deeper and more irregular with deep
dead furrows in the lower elevations (approximately 1,175 ft
above mean sea level). Initial test excavations were carried
out in the southern end of the field, where clusters of lithic
debitage and fire-cracked rock had hinted that there might be
buried cultural features. No definitive features were located in
this lower portion of the field before steady rains for several
weeks terminated the excavations in that wet area.
The field school crew consisted of five college
students, both undergraduate and graduate. The work they
carried out was coordinated with the systematic shovel-test
excavating of the paid crew, Loudan and Heath. All personnel
were under the direct supervision of McDowell-Loudan. Field
work occurred from May 22 through June 30, 1989, and
processing of the data, as well as library research and
informant interviews, were carried out throughout the period
of May through July, 1989.
Due to a lack of consistent site designation for many
counties in New York State and the loss of information that
occurred when fires damaged some of the repositories, the
archaeological site found during the 1989 survey at Dryden
Lake has been labeled 35 TO 20. Probably it is the site
designated by the State marker. To date, no new designation
has been given by New York State to identify the site
differently.
A total of 421 test pits were investigated. Areas
within roadways, swamps, and rocky outcrops were excluded
from testing. Each pit measured 12-18 in. in diameter and was
excavated by shovel and trowel as deeply as possible to
determine soil stratigraphy and to determine the presence of
artifacts or buried features. These shovel-test pits were 50 ft
apart and were laid out in a grid that covered both Parcel A
and Parcel B of the Dryden Lake Recreation Area. Within
Parcel A, forty-three 5-ft-by-5-ft squares were scraped to the
surface of the subsoil within the area that had been
determined, through surface survey and shovel-test pits. to
yield artifacts that might reflect buried cultural information.
These squares were shoveled and troweled, and all soils were
screened through 1/4-in mesh sifters. Seventy-three 10-ftbyl0-ft squares were surface-collected to provide a controlled
collection for use as a guide to other potential buried cultural
materials and to supplement other .sampling methods.
11
The Bulletin
All recovered prehistoric materials and a
preponderance of the historic materials came from the cornfield
in Parcel A. The fact that other areas had not been exposed
through plowing the way the cornfield had been may have
influenced the quantities and distribution of artifacts found in the
survey. However, the meticulous surface inspections and shoveltesting throughout the entire 35 acres of Parcel A and Parcel B
appear to support the artifact distribution reported here.
The prehistoric artifacts consisted of approximately 500
fragments of chert debitage, as well as 6 projectile points and 5
tips, 3 scraping tools, 1 drill tip, 5 hammerstones, 1 net sinker, 28
ceramic sherds, and more than 700 lb of fire-cracked rock.
Details of these materials are reported in McDowell-Loudan and
Loudan (1989). Nowhere else in the excavations were diagnostic
artifacts found within the excavated units in contexts that were
not plow mixed. The diagnostic projectile points were surface
finds.
The small sample of potentially diagnostic projectile
points provides some general boundaries for analysis. A large
chert projectile point, possibly a lance or spear point, although
broken, appears to fit the type category called Otter Creek, dated
elsewhere to 3_500-2500 B.C. (Ritchie 1980:84-89).
Alternatively, it might be a large Meadowood variant, a point
style characteristic of the early Point Peninsula (Point Peninsula
I) cultural complex from approximately 2448 B.C. (C-794, Libby
1954:137 in Ritchie 1971:35), to 563 B.C. (M-640, Crane and
Griffin 1959:183 in Ritchie 1971:35). Both artifact types have
wide geographic distributions and tend to have been
manufactured from local lithic materials. Both have been found
on sites in Central New York as well as in Ontario, Canada, and
in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and further afield, according to
Ritchie.
Because of the presence of two other projectile points
that fit criteria for Brewerton side-notched points, the Otter Creek
affiliation for the aforementioned point seems likely. According
to Ritchie (1971:40-41), Otter Creek points have been found on
sites attributed to the Brewerton complex of Central New York,
Robinson Site. Onondaga County, for example, and both
Brewerton and Otter Creek points occurred on the Vermont sites
where Otter Creek points were found first and given their type
names (Vergennes complex of the Archaic Laurentian on Otter
Creek).
A lobate stemmed point, Lagoon. Rossville, or Adenalike perhaps, and a rounded isosceles triangular point do not fit
any of the type descriptions or specific ranges of variation for
point type guidelines presented by Ritchie and others in the
typology (Ritchie 1971). It may be that these specimens, as well
as the Brewerton-like ones, have been resharpened and broken to
the stage where their original contours have been blurred too
much for concise identification. Suggesting Rossville affiliation
for the lobate stemmed point would place it in a Late Archaic or
Early Woodland time and cultural frame, about 800 B.C. to A. D.
800. This date, correlated with the morphological features, would
fit Adena or Lagoon placement. This tool styling is an example of
broad geographical and temporal extent of cultural usage of
certain stylistic features. It serves as a warning that one should
not become too narrow in focus when trying to reconstruct the
interaction spheres of archaeological sites within a county, state,
or region.
The isosceles triangular shaped projectile point may be
of Levanna affiliation, although its attributes do not fit Ritchie's
examples closely (Ritchie 1971). Norris (1969) noted examples
of Owasco culture, including Levanna-type points, in artifact
collections from the Dryden Lake area when he made his study of
Indian trails and traces. The single example from 35 TO 20, a
surface find, has a straight base and rounded contours which are
inconclusive. Dates from sites of Owasco cultural materials
where contexts could be radiocarbon dated, began about A.D.
1070±60 years (Y-1534) at the Roundtop Site, in Endicott,
Broome County, New York, and A.D. 1100 ± 100 years (Y-1173)
at the Maxon-Derby Site, located l.0 mi east of Jordan, Onondaga
County, New York; Owasco seems to merge into Iroquoian
groupings about A.D. 1310 ± 95 years (I-2399) at the Nahrwold
No. 1 Site, 1.0 mi south of Middleburg, Schoharie County, New
York (Bradley 1987: 210; Ritchie 1980: XXIV-XXVI, 274-275).
So far, the ambiguous artifacts from Dryden Lake's 35 TO 20 do
not seem to reflect the transition to identifiable Iroquoian
groupings.
The remaining fragmentary point or drill tips lack
diagnostic attributes. While their lithic material and shape hint
that they could be characteristic of Levanna points of Owasco
culture, neither these artifacts nor the single chert end scraper are
definitive of this connection.
As noted previously, there were modifications to the
planned sampling of the cornfield area (35 TO 20) due to weather
conditions. The summer of 1989, especially in its early half, was
exceptionally wet. The topography of the field where excavation
occurred included a gradual slope south and east to the lake.
Artifactual materials, both historic and prehistoric, were more
frequent on the surface, in the lower portions of the field,
corresponding with the deeper plowing and dead furrows in some
cases and deeper deposits of slope wash in other cases. These
areas became increasingly wet, making excavation impossible in
some instances.
Under these conditions, intensive controlled surface
collection of 10-ft-by-l0-ft squares was carried out to make use of
data on the surface. Also, after each rain storm the upper reaches
of the field were inspected for newly exposed clues to buried
features, and all artifacts and discolorations found were plotted
on the site map. It became evident that more rain was predicted
and the lower parts of the field could not be excavated further
during the five weeks of the field school; this necessitated an
alternative approach. In a portion of the field that was upslope
(north and slightly east) from the earlier excavations, where
surface indications included fire-cracked rock and chert flakes. a
backhoe was used to strip off the plowzone in an area designated
the North Strip. This rectangle measured 20 ft north-south by 50
ft east-west and was girded into 5-ft-by-5-ft squares, each of
which was scraped to the surface of the subsoil with trowels,
exposing a series of fire-reddened and ashy gray discolorations.
Screening of-soils was carried out once the features were
exposed. A number
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Fall 1993 No. 106
of features, some containing charcoal for possible radiocarbondating, were located, plotted, photographed, and excavated. Not
all were free of rodent disturbance, but in two cases, there
appeared to be prehistoric burned features in which grit-tempered
pottery, some with exterior cordmarking, was found. This may
provide a clearer indication of one set of occupants at the site
during the Woodland Period, probably Owasco affiliates.
The historic artifacts found were scant. Except for a
small clear glass salt dish and an ambiguous bit of glazed
ceramic, which might pre-date 1900, all other materials appear to
represent 1970s and 1980s debris. Amongst these materials are a
bent tire iron, glass fragments, aluminum foil, a nail, and plastic
wrap. These materials as well as all the prehistoric artifacts were
found in Parcel A. It seems probable that the historic materials
arrived at the site as part of the material in the manure that was
spread in early days of the field school program. Some of the
historic materials were products of discard by hunters and
fishermen who cross the field to reach the lake shore.
about the history of these structures and their age were valuable
to the archaeological study in 1989.
As soon as the park grant was awarded, the
archaeological portion was placed high on the priority list by the
Town personnel. Every effort was made to provide information,
necessary names, services, and access approvals for going onto
the lands to McDowell-Loudan. The efficiency of resp onse
demonstrates what can be done when aspects like archaeological
studies are treated as logical and significant segments of a project
rather than relegated to the last-minute nuisance category.
News of the project, while kept to a level that avoided
potential site damage, did reach people who provided positive
reporting for the Tompkins and Cortland county areas. Wider
reaching publicity included an article in Lapidary Journal in
December of 1989. Its editor came to the site for the last two days
of field work as participant and reporter (Berk 1989).
What are the results of the study? A significant
prehistoric site was located. It is one that had been identified and
marked in the 1930s, but it was never studied with any degree of
scientific control. No significant historic sites that might be
endangered by creation of a multi-purpose park were found.
Conveniently, the limits of the prehistoric site appear to
correspond with the cornfield in Parcel A.
According to the Dryden Recreation Area proposal, a
roadway along the eastern edge of the cornfield was planned to
provide access to a parking lot plotted at the south end of the
field near the lake. These two planned modifications were located
within the apparent bounds of the prehistoric site's major
concentrations of surface materials. The preparation of a roadway
and gravel parking lot would damage these and adjacent
potentially sensitive segments of the site that had not been
delineated during the 1989 study clue to swampy conditions and
time constraints.
The variety of prehistoric artifacts and their ambiguous
distributions suggest there were separate activity areas present in
the field. These might correlate with the specific groups present
at a particular time. More study is needed to make such
distinctions. The nature and distribution of artifacts suggests that
slope wash transported some lightweight materials downhill
south and slightly eastward. However, there are also
concentrations of heavy and light artifactual surface materials
which seem to reflect separate use in several parts of the
cornfield.
Recommendations for the site included changes in
plans for parking and the roadway. More archaeological study of
the field to document all its prehistoric components and leaving
the field untouched were suggested as alternatives. If additional
excavations were the chosen option, areas where the road,
parking area, and other subsurface disturbances would occur
needed thorough study. More mechanical stripping and screening
of the subsoil, mapping of subsurface features and their contexts,
and sampling of soils in the features, for flotation and other tests,
would be appropriate. Charcoal samples for radiocarbon-dating,
if
possible,
Discussion and Recommendations
A number of positive factors are represented by the
Dryden Lake Recreation Area project. Among them has been the
enthusiastic support of and interest in the archaeological part of
the project by the Village and Town officials. The project had
been in the planning stages for at least a decade, and there had
been efforts to involve as many people as possible in the plans.
McDowell-Loudan had been invited to speak at the schools from
time to time about her research in nearby Cortland County and
about what might be relevant to the eastern portion of Tompkins
County. Informal discussions of the ideas for the park had
occurred while research for the sewer project was under way. At
that time, a booklet outlining walking tours within the Village of
Dryden had been offered as an illustration for possible use when
the lake's recreation area was developed. There was enthusiasm
about incorporating archaeology into a set of environmental
guide books or trail-side signs.
In 1985, when the Dryden Historical Society arranged
for a talk on local archaeology and invited those who came to
bring artifacts for identification and recording by site, if possible,
there was a large turnout of adults, children, including elementary
school classes, and Boy Scouts. A number of artifacts were
brought for identification, although provenience was unknown in
most cases. Several people arranged to provide information at a
later date, and some of them have been helpful since that time.
The idea of an archaeological field school on a site near
the Village was raised, and there was interest in such a
possibility. The planning preparation for the park grant from New
York State had hit a snag, however, and many aspects of the
project were on hold at that time.
Between 1985 and 1988, there were informal
information exchanges, but the park grant proposal was stalled.
The local historical society, however, was continuing its
preparations, one of which was the publication of a guide to barns
located around Dryden Lake and its vicinity (Prentiss 1988). Data
13
The Bulletin
would be informative. To gain the maximum amount of
artifactual material from the site, the plowzone should be
screened, and all archaeological material in it should be analyzed,
in at least some large sampling areas. The Town of Dryden chose
to seed the field, omitting the proposed roadway and parking area
from their plans.
Sub-plowzone features were not evident from artifact
and soil color indications on the surface in many cases. In part,
this may be due to plowing activity and slope wash. Other factors
may be the depth of the features, the dispersal of materials as
manure is spread, and the creation of artificial color changes
resulting from the spraying of fertilizers and other chemicals.
Some upland areas of the field are very rocky. Such obstructions
result in irregular plowing, which can create misleading color
changes on the surface that do not correspond with buried
features.
The literature, local informants, and the 1989 field
study point to a multi-component prehistoric site, strategically
located near Indian trails, where groups of Native Americans
exp loited local resources from time to time over several thousand
years. Despite years of plowing and surface collection by artifact
hunters, evidence in the form of material culture from several
time periods before the arrival of Europeans in the area continue
to turn up on the ground surface.
This suggests that site usage may have been fairly intensive and
that subsurface features may still remain in the field, relatively
intact, despite plowing activity. The discoveries of a set of such
subsurface features in this study indicate that although some are
truncated from plowing, a portion remains intact. Loss of other
potential information of this type at this site would be unfortunate
when there is an opportunity to retrieve or protect it for future
study. If construction activity demolishes it now, the decision to
try to find out more about the past cannot be made in the future.
Facts, inferences, and speculations about the Dryden
Lake area are tantalizing. While Owasco cultures Levanna-style
projectile points were said to be common finds at the Dryden
Lake Site in the past, and while the New York State marker
reports a "hunting and fishing ground" there, the 1989 study
added other dimensions. It yielded artifacts and buried features
from other time periods and perhaps for other kinds of activities,
including tool making and repair as well as cooking.
In buried, possibly datable contexts, pottery was
recovered at the site. While pottery does not rule out hunting and
fishing as a major focus of attention, it does suggest that cooking
or pottery making activities and the presence of farming people
as well might be factors for consideration.
These prehistoric people may have vi sited the lake
shores for hunting, fishing, and plant-gathering, as well as for
farming-related tasks. Perhaps this was a meeting place for
family bands who converged on the location to share its diversity
and an opportunity to socialize.
In early historic times, the area near Dryden was known
for brick-making, according to Harford historian, Mary Anne
Negus. Sources of clay for the purpose are available nearby, and
similar sources might have been exploited for the manufacture of
prehistoric pottery.
Michael Lane, Mayor of the Village of Dryden, noted
that a source of cash for local residents in the 1800s was the
burning of wood charcoal for production of potash for sale. He
wondered whether any of the discolored areas within 35 TO 20
could be attributed to that historic activity. This is another focus
for future archaeological consideration within the park area.
Prehistoric settlement patterns are not understood
thoroughly in Central New York for many time periods.
Additional study within the vicinity of the Dryden Lake Site
might show where and how far away the prehistoric groups lived,
what particular resources they exploited, why they came to the
lake, why they left the area, and when they did so.
Among the non-artifactual material collected in 1989
are charcoal and soil for testing. These were obtained from all
excavation units and all features within them. Perhaps these will
yield data about seasonal site use and other ecological factors.
While preservation of plant and animal remains outside burned
contexts is very poor at the site, additional pits and hearths might
provide better opportunities for their preservation.
Remaining areas of 35 TO 20 have the potential for
yielding fish scales, animal bones, bits of charred basketry,
charred nuts, and charred seeds, as well as other materials that
might help broaden the range of data available to document other
times and human activities of the area. While some sites in
Central New York have provided useful materials like these and
like those found at Dryden Lake Site, their contexts are not
always well documented, and the distribution of the sites
continues to leave geographic and temporal gaps that are not well
understood.
As housing developments, sand and gravel quarries,
and urban development expand land modification, potential site
locations for study decline. It is not enough to have historic
markers noting the former presence of human activity for some
time in the past. It is vital to gather details of time, cultural
affiliation, site activities, seasonality, and ecological or
environmental context for the sites.
The interrelationships of sites to one another as well as
their distributions at one time and through time are important. For
example, there are few documented prehistoric sites in Cortland
County just east of Dryden Lake or for the southeastern portion
of Tompkins County itself. At the same time, prehistoric and
early historic trails plotted by Norris (1969), Parker (1922), and
others suggest that these areas were part of the travel network
over thousands of years (McDowell-Loudan in Vanaria 1986).
Funk (1992, personal communication) commented on
gaps in site distributions on inland and upland areas away from
waterways. It has been assumed that the fact that waterways were
major access routes in many parts of the Eastern United States
explained site correlations with waterways. Study of the hillsides
in the vicinity of Dryden Lake and adjacent areas is needed to
determine whether there are sites away from the lake or nearby
streams, and if so, for what purposes.
14
Fall 1993 No. 106
Conclusion
References Cited
The archaeological study of the project area
within Dryden Lake Recreation Area was a success from a
cultural resource management viewpoint. Information
gathered has been utilized for college-student training,
public education, background material for other planning,
and for a supplement to research carried out in adjacent
areas on Virgil Creek by the Soil Conservation Service.
Recommendations for site preservation, as
provided in the 1989 archaeological report, were
welcomed by the Town of Dryden, rather than perceived
as a stumbling block to the project. Town officials
conferred with the archaeologists to determine the best
way to stabilize and protect the site. Currently, the field is
seeded with grass. An alternative site away from the
archaeologically sensitive portions of the park was
developed for the access road and parking lot.
There is interest in the acquisition of a field cast
of 35 TO 20, which has features similar to those of the site
itself. Indeed, local artifact collectors noted that it may
contain more prehistoric artifacts than the Town-owned
property (Prentiss 1989, personal communication). This
tract, currently under cultivation, is another broad one
which slopes southward to the lake with a narrow swampy
strip along its shore and a drainage channel for waters
from north of the area. The channel runs from north to
south into the lake. Members of the Historical Society,
naturalists clubs, the Audubon Society, fishing and boating
clubs, and hiking groups would like to see this land
retained as parkland rather than developed as more
housing. Again, Michael Lane and Dryden Historical
Society personnel expressed interest in an archaeological
study of this tract. Their hope is that determining the range
of potential archaeological, historical, natural, and
recreational features for this real estate might provide ideas
for a means of acquiring it for the park (Lane 1992,
personal communication).
Admittedly, some of the reasons for interest in
archaeological potentials of the currently owned and
potential land acquisitions for the recreation area are not
due to an absolute commitment to archaeology. A multipurpose park has different value for diverse populations.
However, an environmental protection theme, within
which floral, faunal, geological, historical, and cultural
concerns are addressed is one that has been stressed
verbally and implemented consistently as the Dryden Lake
Recreation Area project has developed.
Berk, Merle
1989
Rush Slowly. Lapidary Journal December:51-65.
Bradley, James W.
1987
Evolution
of
the
Onondaga
Iroquois:
Accommodating Change, 1500-1655. Syracuse
University Press, Syracuse.
Lee, Hardy Campbell
1977
A History of Railroads in Tompkins County.
DeWitt Historical Society of Tompkins County.
Ithaca.
McDowell-Loudan, Ellis E., and Gary L. Loudan
1977a New York State Cultural Resource Sampling
Project, Ludlowville Quadrangle. New York
Archaeological Council, Albany.
1977b Lansing Village Sewer Expansion Project Stage
IA,
Preliminary
Cultural
Resources
Reconnaissance. Gowdy and Hunt Surveying and
Engineering. Corning.
1981-84 Dryden-Freeville .Joint Facilities Plan (C-36
1261-01), Addendum and Supplements. Morrell
Vrooman Engineers and Stearns and Wheeler
Engineers, Cazenovia and Binghamton.
1988
Archeological Literature Search for Town of
Lansing Housing Development. Tompkins
County, New York. Roger A. Beck Construction,
Freeville.
1989
Cultural Resource Survey for the Proposed
Dryden Lake Recreation Area, Town of Dryden.
Tompkins County, New York. Dryden.
New York Archaeological Council and New York State
Division of Historic Preservation
1985-86 A Bibliography of Archaeological Survey Reports
Filed tit the State Historic Preservation Office
through March, 1984, and Draft Supplements
through March 1986. Albany.
Norris, W. Glenn
1969
Old Indian Trails in Tompkins County. Cornell
University, Ithaca.
Palmer. Richard F.
1974
Butter and Cheese Express: The Auburn Branch
of New York Oswego Midland Railroad 18691891. Faulkner Printing Company, Sherburne.
New York.
15
The Bulletin
Parker, Arthur C. Ritchie, William A.
1922
Archaeological History of New York (2 parts).
New York State Museum Bulletin235-238.
Albany.
Ritchie, William A.
1971
A Typology and Nomenclature for New York
Projectile Points. (Second revis ed edition.). New
York State Museum and Science Service Bulletin
384.
Patterson, Leland W.
1922
Failures in Cultural Resource Management on
Private Lands. The Chesopiean 30(1-2):l-6.
Ritchie, William A.
1980
The Archaeology of New York State. Revised
edition. Harbor Hills, Harrison.
Prentiss, Gina P., editor
1988
Barns of the Dryden Lake Area: A Self-Guided
Tour. With R. Blakeley. Dryden Historical
Society, Dryden.
Vanaria, Louis M., editor
1986
From Many Roots: Immigrants and Ethnic
Groups in the History of Cortland County, New
York. Cortland County Chronicles 4(18):102111.
16
Catlinite and Red Slate Ornaments from the Enders House Site, Schoharie Crossing State
Historic Site, Montgomery County, New York
Charles L. Fisher, New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Bureau of Historic Sites
Archaeological excavations at the Enders House at
Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site revealed an
eighteenth-century foundation. This was in contrast to the
documentary research which traced the existing building to
the early nineteenth century. In addition, the eighteenthcentury house was associated with a Mohawk Iroquois
occupation. The red slate and catlinite objects used and
manufacture by the Mohawk at this site are described in this
report.
Introduction
Archaeological excavations at the Enders House at
Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site provided material
evidence of the eighteenth-century site of Fort Hunter, which
was built in 1711 at the Mohawk Indian settlement of
Tiononderoga (Figure 1). Schoharie Crossing State Historic
Site is located at the confluence of the Schoharie Creek and
the Mohawk River in Montgomery County, New York. Plans
to repair and rebuild portions of the Enders House foundation
required the removal of historic soil deposits around this
building. Archaeological excavations were conducted in 1989
and 1990 prior to this restoration.
These excavations provided a new and different
perspective on this site. In contrast to the documentary
history, which traced the existing building to the early
nineteenth-century, archaeology revealed an eighteenthcentury construction date for a portion of the stone cellar. In
addition, soil strata containing eighteenth-century material
items that were deposited prior to the cellar construction were
identified.
The material objects recovered from eighteenthcentury contexts consist of a variety of English ceramics,
glass, tobacco pipes, wine-bottle fragments, and other items.
Glass trade beads, tinkler cones, a Jew's harp, a triangular
copper-alloy brass arrowpoint, and ornaments of catlinite and
red slate indicate a house on the site may have been occupied
by Mohawk Iroquois. The faunal collection reflects a diet
based upon both domestic and wild animals.
The Mohawk occupation of this site is supported by
the documentary evidence for the spatial arrangement of the
settlement at Fort Hunter. The Enders House is situated near
the estimated location of the chapel, which was centered
within the original Fort Hunter and rebuilt in 1740 (Moody
and Fisher 1989). The chapel was the focus of the Mohawk
community at Fort Hunter, which consisted of 40 or 50
wigwams within a palisade (Lydekker 1968:37). This
community was fo rmally separated from the English by the
construction of a new fort in 1755. A fire in 1773
Figure 1. Location of Enders House. Schoharie Crossing
State Historic Site on USGS Tribes Hill. N.Y. Quadrangle.
destroyed two curtain walls of the fort, and "two good framed
houses belonging to the Indians adjacent thereto" (JP 8:753).
The objects from the Enders House excavation that clearly
identify the Mohawks as former occupants are the catlinite
and red slate ornaments. These objects have been found on
many late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sites that are
associated with Native American occupations in the
Northeast. This report describes these ornaments and offers an
interpretation of their presence at this site.
The Archaeological Context
Fort Hunter was constructed in 1711 near the site of
a Mohawk Iroquois village. In 1712 Reverend William
Andrews noted this village "stands by the fort, consisting of
40 or 50 wigwams or houses" (Lydekker 1968:37).
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The Bulletin
The construction of the stone foundation at the Enders
House took place sometime after 1760. The presence of
creamware in the builders' trench indicates the house construction
may have taken place late in the 1760s. The presence of the
builders' trench in several excavations has enabled the division of
the eighteenth-century strata into two periods. The early strata
were deposited prior to the cellar construction (pre-1760), while
the late eighteenth-century strata developed during and after the
cellar construction. Several strata could not be directly related to
the builders' trench, so they are identified only as eighteenth
century in date in Table l. The occupation of this site was
disrupted by the Revolutionary War, which may be considered as
the end of what is referred to as the eighteenth-century
occupation of this site in this report.
Nine of the twelve catlinite and red slate objects were
recovered from eighteenth-century deposits. Three items (#550,
404, 390) were found in disturbed contexts, probably the result of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century foundation repairs that
interrupted earlier, eighteenth-century deposits.
Bead Descriptions
Eight beads of catlinite and red slate were recovered
from excavations at this site, representing four different shapes of
beads (Table l, Figure 2).
Type I
Figure 2. The four ornament shapes recovered in excavation.
A single example of a square slate bead with a center
hole (#380) similar to those depicted by Kent (1989:166) is
present in this collection. This item is about 5/8 in wide and 3/32
in thick. The center hole was bored from opposite sides and has a
diameter of approximately 5/32 in. This specimen was probably
broken in manufacture, since there is no evidence of the holes
necessary to string this bead.
Specimen #489 has a maximum width of 5/8 in, has a
length of 1 3/32 in, and is about 1/4 in thick. There is a single
large (1/8-in) perforation at the wide end of this object and two
smaller (1/16 in and 5/64 in) holes at the narrow end. These two
drill holes meet each other and the larger hole inside this
specimen. This double drilling created a bead which may have
been used as a pendant, since two strings may enter one end and
exit as a single string through the larger hole.
Specimen #604, a narrow, triangular bead, is 1 7/32 in
long and1h- in thick and has a maximum width of 15/32 in. It is
broken at the narrow end, where the bore diameter is about 1/16
in. The bore is 5/64 in at the wider end.
Both items #688 and #404 are broken examples of
narrow triangular beads. Specimen #688 is 1/2 in long and 5/32
in thick and has a maximum width of 3/8 in. The drilled
perforation is 1/16 in in diameter at the wider end and 5/64 in at
the narrow end where a portion of this bead is missing. This
object was not broken in manufacture, since the broken end was
ground smooth. Specimen #404 is a small section only 1/2 in
long with a 1/16 in diameter perforation.
Type II
Two flat, triangular ground-stone beads with concave
sides and bases represent a second bead type. Each of these has a
hole which was drilled through the long axis from each end of the
bead. Specimen #550 is red slate, about 7/8 in long, 5/32 in thick
with a maximum width of about 3/4 in. The bore diameter of this
hole is 1/16 in on one end and 3/32 in on the opposite end,
possibly enlarged from wear abrasion. Another triangular bead
(#505) is made of catlinite. This specimen is 14/32 in wide, 1/8 in
long, and in thick. The bore diameter is less than 1/16 in.
Type III
Type IV
A third type of catlinite bead found at this site has a
narrow triangular shape with a smoothed medial ridge that
resulted in a rounded, diamond-shaped cross-section. They are
longitudinally drilled.
The fourth bead type represented is a catlinite tube
bead (#385). This object is drilled from one side and broken at
the opposite end where the drill broke through the edge of the
bead. This item is 1 7/8 in in length and 3/16 in in maximum
width and
18
Fall 1993 No. 106
Table 1. Summary Table, Catlinite and Red State Beads.
Type
Cat.#
Date*
Material
Description
I
II
II
III
380
550
505
489
18th c.
M
18th c.
18th c.
Red Slate
Red Slate
Catlinite
Catlinite
III
604
E
Catlinite
III
688
L
Catlinite
III
404
M
Catlinite
IV
385
18th c.
Catlinite
Flat-sided, thin, square bead with center hole, unfinished
Triangular bead with concave sides and base
Triangular bead with concave sides and base
Narrow triangular bead/pendant, diamond-shaped cross
section, longitudinally drilled
Narrow triangular bead/pendant, diamond-shaped cross
section, longitudinally drilled
Narrow triangular bead/pendant, diamond-shaped cross
section, longitudinally drilled
Narrow triangular bead/pendant, diamond-shaped cross
section, longitudinally drilled
Tube bead, drilled from one end
Material
Catlinite
Catlinite
Red Slate
Red Slate
Description
Rectangular bead blank, undrilled
Rectangular bead blank, undrilled
Rectangular bead blank, undrilled
Triangular shaped with 2 cut and "snapped" edges
Table 2. Modified Catlinite and Red Slate.
Cat.#
452
286
616
390
Date*
L
18th c.
E
M
*Note: All specimens Acre recovered from eighteenth-century contexts except those indicated "M," which were found in strata mixed or disrupted by later
intrusions. "G" indicates early eighteenth-century deposits formed prior to t he stone cellar construction. "L" indicates later eighteenth-century deposits formed
after the stone cellar construction.
thickness. The perforation is 1/16 in in diameter, although a
larger (9/64 in) bore, probably a starter hole, exists at one end.
In addition to these eight stone beads, four pieces of
catlinite and red slate ornaments exist in an unfinished condition
(Table 2). These items indicate the production of stone beads
took place at this site.
Two items of catlinite (#452, #286) and one piece of
red slate (#616) appear to be blanks for tube beads. They are
rectangular in shape, with rough edges and undrilled. Specimen
#286 is 2 3/32 in long, 9/16 in wide, and 1/2 in high. This object
evidences the method of removing the blank from the raw
material. A slab of catlinite, approximately 1/2 in thick, was
partially sawed to form grooves on each side about 1/2 in from an
edge. The rectangular piece was then "snapped" off, leaving a
rough ridge on the cut edge. This ridge was then ground down.
The initial sawing, the rough central area of the cut edge, and the
grinding are all visible on this object. The second catlinite bead
blank is 1 13/32 in long, 1/4 in wide, and 7/32 in high. One end
of this object has a small indentation, possibly a "set" for drilling.
The red slate bead blank (#616) is about 1 in long,
11/32 in high, and 9/32 in wide. One end of this bead has been
ground smooth.
A single piece of worked red slate (#390) was
recovered. This item is triangular in shape with edges of 1 3/4 in,
1 5/32, in, and 1 15/16 in. The thickness varied from a maximum
of 7/32 in to 1/8 in. The longest and thickest edge was cut from
both sides and "snapped" but not ground smooth. A second
straightedge was cut from one side and "snapped" but not ground.
This object may have been a square bead, in process, since it was
not thick enough to be a tube bead.
The bead manufacturing process represented here is
similar to that reported by Fox (1980). The major difference lies
in his identification of the raw material as red siltstone pebbles.
No evidence of red slate or catlinite in cobble form is present in
the collection from the Enders House.
Discussion
Catlinite and red slate ornaments are clearly associated
with historic Iroquois sites in New York State. Beauchamp
(1897:26-67) noted that "a little before A.D. 1700 catlinite or red
pipestone was brought east in small quantities and soon became
quite abundant." Wray (1973:30) listed these items as "index
traits" of the historic Seneca. Although tubular slate and catlinite
beads appear on Seneca sites of the seventeenth century, Wray
defined the period 1710-1730 as the "Catlinite and Slate Era"
(Wray 1973:8).
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The Bulletin
Objects similar to the catlinite and slate ornaments
from the Enders Site were reported from the Primes Hill Site
(Bennett 1988). This site, an Oneida Iroquois occupation, was
given a mean date of 1733, based upon the European tobaccopipe sterns recovered. The numerous examples of red slate
pendants and beads recovered from the Primes Hill Site include
all the types identified at the Enders Site. The raw material of the
Primes Hill Site specimens was identified as red slate of
northeastern New York. This locally available slate was utilized
to create objects similar to those of catlinite, suggesting the shape
and color may have been as important as the raw material.
Closer to the Enders Site, Guldenzopf (1986:130)
reported a triangular catlinite pendant and a red slate tubular bead
from the site of the home of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant. "This
area along Nowadaga Creek in the town of Danube, Herkimer
County was a separate settlement associated with the eighteenth
century upper or Canajoharie castle" (Guldenzopf 1988:91).
Brant's house site was located about 1000 ft north of the Anglican
mission church built for the Mohawks, now known as Indian
Castle Church. Hesse (1975) found a rectangular catlinite bead
and a red slate pendant at the historic Indian village of Unadilla
in the Susquehanna Valley. This site was occupied between 1753
and 1778, when it was burned by American soldiers during the
Revolutionary War.
Kent (1989:169) reported "hundreds of catlinite
ornaments" from eighteenth-century Susquehannock sites in
present-day Pennsylvania. These people were closely related,
culturally and linguistically, to the Iroquois. The triangular beads
were the most common form of catlinite ornament, with square
beads with cutout centers the next most popular form. These were
followed, in quantity. by the narrow triangular beads. The
collection from the Enders Site, therefore, contains examples of
these most numerous ornament types among the
Susquehannocks.
At Coney Town an intact necklace of square catlinite
beads was found (Kent 1989). This necklace contained glass
beads placed inside the cut-out centers of the square catlinite
beads. This provides a rare example of the appearance of a
complete catlinite ornament.
The source of catlinite for the eighteenth-century
Iroquois was probably within present-day Minnesota, although
the Seneca sources may have been in the current State of
Wisconsin (Kent 1989:165). The spotted pipe quarry in
Pipestone, southwestern Minnesota, may have been the source of
some of the Enders House specimens that are marked with lighter
spots (Sletto 1992:22). The sites near these sources produce
debris and unfinished items from the manufacturing process, but
"no such pieces, implying local manufacture, have been found in
the lower Susquehanna Valley sites" (Kent 1989:171).
The diffusion of catlinite to the Susquehannocks
occurred as finished items. The Mohawk Iroquois at the Enders
Site, however, discarded incomplete catlinite ornaments. The
presence of incomplete items in different stages of manufacture
indicates that catlinite was not obtained by the Iroquois only as
finished objects but that the ornaments were completed by them.
Kent (1989) suggested that the catlinite ornaments may
have been associated with the catlinite pipes and together
diffused into the Eastern Woodlands in the calumet ceremony.
This seems reason able due to the limited geographic source for
catlinite and the similar temporal appearance of both forms of
worked catlinite. Turnbaugh (1979) offered an explanation for
the spread of calumet ceremonialism as a nativistic response to
the fragmentation of traditional lifeways in the historic period.
Blakeslee (1981) responded with an alternative thesis which
presented the calumet pipe's eastward diffusion as the result of
trade and alliances. Blakeslee provided documentary references
for the calumet ceremony among the Plains Apaches in 1634 and
archaeological evidence for the prehistoric existence of calumet
pipes. On the basis of this evidence, he argued that the calumet
ceremony existed before the disruptive European contact. The
diffusion of this ceremony, therefore, must have been a result of
trade and war alliances.
The age of the calumet ceremony in the Plains,
however, does not rule out the nativistic role in the diffusion of
this ceremony into the Eastern Woodlands. In fact, the age of this
ceremony may contribute to the association of traditional values
with it. While the origin of this ceremony was not a response to
culture change, its diffusion may have been.
At the same time, the role of trade and alliances cannot
be denied. The Iroquois, in their role as middle men, could obtain
catlinite and furs from the Great Lakes region because they had
access to European objects desired by other native groups. The
presence of similar objects in locally available red slate indicates
that their meaning extended beyond the formation of alliances, as
Blakeslee (1981) suggests.
These catlinite ornaments may have functioned in
several ways at the same time, changed function through time, or
held different meaning to different participants in the activities.
Groups from the Great Lakes region may have employed
catlinite, and the associated ceremonialism, to establish trade
relationships with eastern groups that had direct access to
European manufactured items. The same ceremonies may have
had additional associative meanings for the Eastern Native
Americans, such as the Iroquois.
The interpretation of these material items at the Enders
Site requires a consideration of the specific historical context. In
response to the request of the "Indian Kings" who visited London
in 1710. Queen Anne ordered the construction of a chapel inside
a fort and a house for two missionaries. Fort Hunter was
constructed in 1711 near the Tiononderoga Mohawk settlement.
with a chapel containing a six-piece set of communion plate and
other gifts from Queen Anne.
In 1712. William Andrews became the missionary to
the Tiononderoga Mohawks and initially "enjoyed a measure of
evangelical success.... Sixty or seventy regularly attended chapel"
(Axtell 1985:259-260). This success did not last, since by 1716
only "about 50 Mohawks attended pretty constantly ... when at
home" (Axtell 1985:260).
20
Fall 1993 No. 106
By the fall of 1717 chapel attendance had slipped
to twenty-five diehards: ... only two were men,
and they were not ashamed to sleep through
church ni the morning and "be drunk in the
afternoon." Six months later the faithful were
reduced to fourteen or fifteen. Christian
marriages fell off equally sharply, after the
Spring of 1716, to none; the Mohawks
apparently preferred "their own loose ways"....
Even the baptism of their infants, ... meant
something quite different to the Mohawks....
By 1717 the other Iroquois nations
were equally hostile to Christian proselytizing.
When any of them passed Fort Hunter en route
to Albany, they did not attend services but
merely stuck their painted faces in the chapel
door to "mock and deride" the participants.
Simultaneously, the two hundred Mohawks at
the second castle of Canajoharie forbade
Andrews and Claessen to visit them again. When
the missionary forced the issue and began to
preach to a half dozen hardy souls, the
traditionalists beat a drum up and down the
village to drown him out [Axtell 1985:261-262].
that importance that the Missionaries represent it or (Lydekker
1968:72). Ogilvie reported that a sachem's wife "who officiates
as reader in Church, during my absence" was murdered in 1751
(Lydekker 1968:73). Another church member died from burns he
received after getting drunk and falling in a fire.
The problematic relationships between the English and
the Mohawks at Fort Hunter may be viewed in Sir William
Johnson's 1755 proposal for a new fortification, which separated
the Mohawks from the English. He recommended
it to be nearby on a Line with Fort Hunter,
to take in the church as a Bastion & to have
a Communication Pallisado between the
two forts.... in case of an attack [DHNY
2:657].
In 1756, Johnson referred to 100 men from the lower
Mohawk castle: "Seventy in their Castle as they call it, besides
the thirty Lieut. Williams has in the Kings Fort" (JP 9:509). The
1758 description of a conflict between Mohawks and soldiers
provides further evidence that separate English and Mohawk forts
existed near each other at Fort Hunter. After he was pushed away
from the gate of the English Fort, a Native American returned to
his house and "attempted to stop the soldiers" from entering "the
gate of the Indian fort" (JP 13:105).
Guldenzopf (1986:137) states that the traditionalist
Mohawks "had apparently begun to decline in number during the
eighteenth century." While they may have declined, they did not
disappear. Christian marriages and baptisms increased, but these
may have been additions to traditional ceremonial life. In 1772,
Reverend Stuart claimed success for his ministry at Fort Hunter
since he had 20 communicants (Lydekker 1968:131). Others, he
noted, "still continue in their former state" (Lydekker 1968:130).
Only 19 "Indian Communicants" from both Mohawk castles
received the Sacrament from Reverend Harry Munro in 1770
(Lydekker 1968:128) when there were 160 inhabitants in the
lower Mohawk village and another 180 at Canajoha6e
(Guldenzopf 1986:71).
In 1719 Andrews resigned from the post at Fort Hunter. The
Iroquois mission was left empty until 1727.
Axtell (1985:262-63) attributed the problems at the
Fort Hunter mission to the "renewed faith of the Iroquois in their
ancient communal ceremonies." The smallpox epidemic of 1716
and the arrival of the Tuscaroras may have encouraged the
Iroquois to resume traditional practices. The need for captives as
replacements for dead kin members renewed a series of
traditional rituals involved with war parties, mourning, and
adoption.
The subsequent history of the Fort Hunter mission does
not evidence constant progress but "backsliding"---overtly
practicing Christian teachings while covertly leading traditional
lives (Brenner 1980:146). There were brief periods, usually after
the arrival of a new missionary, when attendance at the chapel
increased. In 1742, following the completion of a new stone
church, "the whole Mohawk tribe was (at least nominally)
Christian, there remained only two or three of the number who
were unbaptized" (Lydekker 1968:55).
Less than a decade later, in 1750, the missionary John
Ogilvie reported that the Mohawks were "universally,
degenerated. Since the war they are entirely given up to
drunkenness. Many seem to have lost all sense of religion, and
the best are in a state of indifferency" (Lydekker 1968:66).
Reverend Samuel Hopkins echoed Ogilvie’s opinion about the
state of the Christian mission among the Mohawk in 1753.
Hopkins noted that most of the Mohawks "remain in a state of
heathenism, and that those of them who pretend to be Christians
know but very little of the principles of Christianity" (Hopkins
1911:79).
Ogilvie referred to additional problems among the
Mohawk that resulted from alcohol and trade in his 1752 report
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The traders
"seem to have a very ill-effect upon [their] Minds & I fear in a
great measure influences them to think that Christianity is not of
Summary
By 1717, the Mohawk Iroquois at Fort Hunter were
avoiding the chapel built at their request in 1711. In addition, the
neighboring Mohawk community at Canajoharie warned the
missionary to stay away. When Andrews arrived and tried to
preach, traditionalists drowned him out with drum beats. This
revival of traditional ceremony and ritual may be attributed to an
outbreak of smallpox and the arrival of the Tuscarora among the
Iroquois in 1716 (Axtell 1985).
These events occurred within the period Wray (1973)
has defined as the "Catlinite and Red Slate Era" among the
Seneca. Turnbaugh (1979:689) has argued that the native
response took form in the expansion of tobacco and pipe
ritualism. While catlinite pipes are related to the calumet
ceremony, the role of catlinite and red slate ornaments is not
similarly documented.
21
The Bulletin
The catlinite beads and pendants are associated with catlinite
pipes through their acquisition from the same geographic source
during the same time period by the Iroquois.
The calumet pipes, as a clear material symbol of the
ceremony, may have been a problem for Native Americans living
at Christian missions. According to Turnbaugh (1979), the Jesuits
among the St. Francis Abnakis refused to permit the performance
of the calumet dance. The Abnakis responded by suggesting the
dance was not very important while performing it in secret.
Beauchamp (1907:434) stated that the calumet pipes
were not common in New York in the eighteenth century because
wampum belts of shell beads were used to open councils and
treaties instead. The presence of catlinite beads and pendants may
have had a traditional meaning to the Iroquois that was unknown
to the missionaries. The lack of catlinite pipes at the Enders Site
suggests the possibility of ornaments as substitutes in the native
system of meaning. This would have been consistent with their
strategy of "backsliding," evident in the documentary history of
this site. The meaning of these items to the Mohawk extended
beyond their role in forming trading and war alliances.
Artifacts are important in the construction of cultural
identity. Material objects, when viewed as symbols, communicate
and express the non-material phenomenon of culture.
Ornamentation is part of the visible display of cultural identity,
"The infallible mark of a praying Indian was his English
appearance" (Axtell 1985:172).
The use of red slate, locally available to the Iroquois,
for the same ornaments indicates that both the color and the
shape of these items had important meaning. Fox (1980) reported
similar beads of red siltstone may have been copies of red glass
beads acquired from Europeans. In his discussion of the meaning
of glass trade beads to the native people of the Northeastern
Woodlands, Hamell (1983) has provided a framework for
interpreting catlinite and red slate beads as well.
the Enders House Site. Future studies of this archaeological
collection will examine this problem.
Acknowledgments
The archaeological research presented in this paper was
carried out with the aid and encouragement of many individuals
in the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation. The support of James Gold, Director of the Bureau
of Historic Sites; Cheryl Gold, Historic Preservation Supervisor,
Saratoga-Capital Region; and Janice Fontanella, Site Manager of
Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site is appreciated. I want to
thank the archaeologists who worked in the field and laboratory,
especially Paul Huey, Lois Feister, Nancy Demyttenaere, Joseph
McEvoy, Mary Albertin, Kevin Moody, Elizabeth Pena, and
Joseph Sopko.
References Cited
Axtell, James
1985
The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in
Colonial North America. Oxford University Press, New
York.
Beauchamp, William M.
1897
Polished Stone Articles Used by the New York
Aborigines. Bulletin of the New York State Museum
4(18).
1907
Civil, Religious and Mourning Councils and
Ceremonies of Adoption of the New York Indians. New
York State Museum Bulletin 113, Archeology 13. New
York State Education Department, Albany.
Bennett, Monte R.
1988
The Primes Hill Site, MSV.S-2: An Eighteenth Century
Oneida Station. Chenango Chapter Bulletin NYSAA
22(4):1-17.
Redness is also an inherent quality of blood,
certain mineral pigments and stones, native
copper, some berries and fruits,.... As a semantic
frame, redness connotes the animate and emotive
aspect of Life .... Depending upon the ritual
context, "redness," the animate aspect of Life,
may be contrasted with either "whiteness," the
cognitive aspect of Life, or with "blackness," the
converse of animacy and cognition [Hamell
1983:7].
Blakeslee. Donald J.
1981
The Origin and Spread of the Calumet Ceremony.
American Antiquity 46(4):759-768.
Brenner, Elise M.
1980
To Pray Or To Be Prey: That is the Question: Strategies
for Cultural Autonomy of Massachusetts Praying Town
Indians. Ethnohistory 27(2):135-152.
Beauchamp (1907:431) noted that "red calumets are most
esteem'd ... for when they have a calumet in hand, they go where
they will in safety."
The manufacture of these ornaments by the Mohawks
at Fort Hunter implies the production of traditional forms in a
highly Europeanized material world. This raises questions about
the function of European-made objects in the hands of Iroquois at
DHNY-O'Callaghan, E.B., editor
1849-51 Documentary History of New, York. 4
Volumes. Weed, Parsons and Co., Albany.
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Fox, William A.
1980
Miskwo Sinnee Munnidomiug. Archaeology of
Eastern North America 8:88-98.
Kent, Barry C.
1989
Susquehanna's Indians. Anthropological Series
Number 6. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The
Pennsylvania
Historical
and
Museum
Commission, Harrisburg.
Guldenzopf, David B.
1986
The Colonial Transformation of Mohawk Iroquois
Society. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of
Anthropology, State University of New York at
Albany.
Lydekker, John Wolfe
1968
The Faithful Mohawk . The University Press,
Cambridge.
Ha mell, George R.
1983
Trading in Metaphors: The Magic of Beads. In
Proceedings of the 1982 Glass Trade Bead
Conference, edited by Charles F. Hayes III, pp. 528. Research Records No. 16, Rochester
Museum& Science Center, Rochester, New York
Moody, Kevin, and Charles L. Fisher
1989
Archaeological
Evidence
of
the
Colonial Occupation at Schoharie Crossing State
Historic Site, Montgomery County, New York.
The Bulletin NYSAA 99:1-13.
Sletto, Jacqueline Widra
1992
Pipestone. Native Peoples 5(2):20-24.
Hesse, Franklin T.
1975
The Egli and Lord Sites: The Historic Component
-"Unadilla" 1753-1778. The Bulletin NYSAA
63:14-31.
Turnbaugh, William A.
1979
Calumet Ceremonialism as a Nativistic Response.
American Antiquity 44(4):685-691.
Hopkins, Rev. Samuel
1911
Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatonic
Indians. Originally published by S. Kneeland,
Boston, in 1753, and reprinted by William
Abbatt, New York.
Wray, Charles
1973
Manual for Seneca Iroquois Archaeology.
Cultures Primitive, Inc., Honeoye Falls, New
York.
JP-Sullivan, J., editor
1921-65 Papers of Sir William Johnson. 13 volumes. State
University of New York, Albany.
23
Oysters and Settlement in the Lower Hudson Valley
Hans F. Schaper, Louis A. Brennan Lower Hudson Chapter, NYSAA
The remains of oyster shell middens are a vital
source, for studying past lifeways in the Lower Hudson
Valley. They may yield information which cannot be
extracted from lithic or ceramic artifacts.
The sizes of midden shells infer the practice of
selected gathering in the Hudson Valley. The results o f the
measurements could also indicate a more permanent
rather- than sporadic occupation of the Lower Hudson
lands during the Late Archaic Period.
Social and economic relations between occupants
of several Hudson sites have been assumed in the past.
Recent tabulations of more than forty radiocarbon dates
define specific, narrow time ranges within which such
contacts could have taken plate. In addition, the presence
of processing middens at various sites suggests that
Indians probably provided oyster meat to base camps or
engaged in exchange.
Delayed Research
The pioneering archaeologist Charles Rau, who
excavated shell middens at Keyport in New Jersey during
1863, remained a rare excavator for a long time. The
general neglect of studying any changes in prehistoric
American cultures before the First World War seemed to
stem from "a longstanding assumption among White
settlers that native Americans were incapable of significant
cultural development" (Trigger 1986:xxii).
In addition, shell middens did not rank high on
investigators' priority lists. It meant difficult digging with
few expectations of diagnostic artifacts while scientific
tests like radiocarbon dating would not be available for
another half century. Shell middens were accorded less
attention than colonial brick walls.
During the nineteenth century, researchers of the
Danish "kokkenmoddinger" (kitchen middens) had already
recognized that the shell heaps were not natural
phenomena but had been deposited by aboriginal people.
They observed that "(a) the valves of the same animal were
rarely found together, (b) native artifacts were mixed with
the shells , (c) the shells were often charred and broken,
and (d) the soil under the middens was not of marine origin
but resembled the surrounding terrain" (Trigger 1986:xii).
Finally, four decades ago, Louis A. Brennan began to
explore systematically the oyster shell middens in the
Lower Hudson Valley and was able to ascertain through
radiocarbon dating that early residents had eaten oysters
during the Archaic Period-leaving the shell piles behind.
Many chronological questions still await
clarification by radiocarbon testing-among them the
periods during which shell sites were used. Other
archaeological research questions extend to regional
comparisons of the resource zones of Metropolitan New
York and neighboring coastal areas (Amorosi 1991:95).
Substantial amounts of archaeological resources
had already been destroyed by colonists who used the shell
to "sweeten" their fields or to produce lime (Kraft 1986).
Urban development depleted the remainders further: "in
coastal New York, for example, known sites and sensitive
areas now lie below city streets , dredged landfill, railroad
beds and highways that hug the shore, countless docks and
marinas" (Ceci 1984:65). The exploration of the Hudson
shell middens is more akin to a salvage operation than to
the exposure of pristine archaeological sites.
Introduction
The concept of settlement patterns in the Archaic
Hudson drainage conveys the image of nebulous
happenings involving migrating hunter-gatherer bands.
However, recent research may modify this interpretation of
prehistoric lifeways. Many millions of oyster shells lined
the Hudson shores from Battery Park to Peekskill. These
shell middens represent a vital feature of past Indian
activities still available to explore prehistoric occupations.
While the American oyster is not particularly beautiful, it
is a very imp ortant animal to archaeologists. The study of
shell accumulations may yield information on Indian life
which cannot be extracted from lithic or ceramic artifacts.
The extensive shellfish exploitation shaped the adaptation
of local inhabitants.
Environmental Setting
The Lower Hudson lands between the river and
Long Island Sound were covered for the past 8000 years
by mixed stands of oak, hickory, chestnut, and maple
which were home to the white tailed deer, black bear, and
smaller mammals like beaver, raccoon, and cottontail
rabbits. An almost inexhaustible fresh water supply
honeycombed the area, most of whose rivers, creeks and
brooks emptied into the Hudson every few kilometers.
"This biome seems to have been one of the most conducive
to human utilization of any area of the Northeast" (Tuck
1978:35).
24
Fall 1993 No. 106
shell middens can actually be tested. The resulting
Evidence
measurements are accordingly subject to sampling bias.
The shell middens along the Lower Hudson vary in
Since the end of the last ice age the American oyster
size from a few square meters to large deposits covering
has been native to the Atlantic coast estuaries from St. George
several acres like Dogan Point, Piping Rock, or Hellgate
Bay to Florida. The shell accumulations along the Hudson
(Brennan 1972:6; Finch 1909:73; Harrington 1909:170). All
shores consist almost entirely of the American Oyster
of these could have also sufficed for assemblies of
(Crassostrea virginica). Clam or mussel shells are rarely
macrobands. The shell remains on the western side of the
found within the heaps. During its prolific life cycle the
river are considerably smaller although there too the white
average oyster may release 50-100 million eggs per year into
debris could be found from Keyport to Hook Mountain and
the surrounding water. Since the Hudson above Manhattan
Stony Point (Harrington 1909; Parker 1922).
curves for about 50 km in a northwestern direction, the river
For the purposes of this discussion the term "kitchen
and tide waters tend to carry the oyster eggs toward the
midden" is applied to left-overs of meals from single or
eas tern shores. This in turn helps to explain why shellfish
extended camping episodes. They often contain bone, antler,
beds-and therefore the shell middens were predominantly
or lithics. They can also be expected to be close to habitation
located at the eastern banks.
as at the Twombly Landing Site (Brennan 1968). The term
The oysters grow rapidly, and under "favorable
"processing midden" is used here for deposits which are large,
conditions, spat may grow as much as 1 cm per month" (Kent
mostly devoid of faunal or lithic artifacts, and can rarely be
1988:5). But as Kent's investigations show, the growth rate
shown associated with habitation. They constitute stations for
slows consider ably after the first year and continues at a
a special-purpose activity: oyster meat preparation. The
relatively steady rate of about 100 mm per three years. "The
"models of midden function are concerned with a number of
relationship between height and age is normally curvilinear...
hypotheses for which there is presently no consensus. They
but the plots for data from oysters in archaeological sites can
include the length of occupation, season(s) of occupation, and
usually be adequately described by a straight line" (Kent
number and kinds of activities that occurred" (Lavin
1988:75-76). Since "oysters can apparently live at least 10 or
1991:83).
12 years" (Kent 1988:8), sizes of 200 to 250 mm (8-10 in)
Large quantities of oysters had to be gathered to
would not seem unusual in undis turbed oyster beds on the
provide a meal because the shell of calcium carbonate and
Hudson. An old valve of 25.5 cm (10 in) from Connecticut is
conchiolin constitutes about 90% of the total weight and only
pictured in the U.S. Fishery Bulletin (Galtsoff 1964: 18, 33).
10% is edible. The close proximity of known midden sites
The height of the shell is measured along its longitudinal axis
indicates that oyster beds were not far apart. The transport of
although that distance is sometimes referred to as its length.
heavy oyster loads probably influenced midden locations.
Some middens originate from a single camping
Discussion
episode of short duration when, as Brennan suggested,
basketsful of shucked shell were dumped at a convenient spot.
The present investigation attempts to use physical
Many others became complex accumulations as successive
measurements of midden shells to present additional
occupiers tossed their shell on top or off center during time
information about past life in the Lower Hudson Valley. In
spans of various duration, possibly associated with different
addition, the implications of more than 40 radiocarbon dates
activities (Lavin 1991:83). Frequently shell heaps on the same
will be evaluated. The Hudson oyster beds were exploited for
site appear in different stages of dissolution ranging from
at least five thousand years. The time frame for this study lies
flake/soil mixtures to compacted walls of intact shells
approximately between two radiocarbon dates: Brennan's
(Wickers Creek, Tellers Point). They also "do not contain
Giant Oyster of 5650 ± 200 B.P. and the shell date of 3590 ±
discrete and easily-followed strata that run from one end of
80 B.P. from Wickers Creek.
the site to the other. Rather, the profiles reveal a confusing
A total of 360 oyster shell samples from seven locations at the
array of shell lenses dipping at various angles and seldom
Lower Hudson were measured. They include Wickers Creek
continuing for more than a few meters" (Sanger 1981:40).
(222), Requa (95), Various (24), Hastings-on-Hudson (9)
The column samples are likely to cut across individual shell
(Table 2); Dobbs Ferry Railroad (5), Dogan Point (3) and two
deposits of considerable temporal variation.
from Georges Island. The Wickers Creek sample consisted of
144 valves from one column while the other 78 shells were
Shell middens do not comprise
taken from four other spots at the site (a processing midden, a
a single, narrowly defined settlement
smaller heap under a fallen tree, etc). The 95 shells excavated
type but instead show considerable
at the Requa Site were stored in the laboratory in Tarrytown,
variability. This variation in location,
but the midden origin is unknown. The batch of 24 shells are
size, age, internal structure and
unprovenienced items collected from Lower Hudson sites by
composition reflects varying roles of
the writer over a number of years. The Hastings specimens
shell middens in particular settlement
surfaced during recent construction of the new Public Works
systems as well as different pathways to
building. Because enormous shell volumes are involved-many
site formation [Funk 1991:55].
of them unavailable for research-only small quantities from
25
The Bulletin
Wickers Creek Site
constituents are highly susceptible to decomposition in acidic
environments ...the inorganic component is also soluble in
alkaline environments" (Linse 1992:327). The archaeological
record is too scanty to support the premise of a predominantly
fishing community at Wickers Creek.
Can the faunal remains be associated with oyster
processing? More than 650 bones and fragments were found in
close proximity of the processing middens. This is more than
one-third the number recovered at the SEQRA excavations from
the entire site. Among them were a 15-cm cutting anvil of heavy
antler and two bone perforators. Most of the other bones had been
crushed-presumably to remove the marrow (Brennan 1981:47).
Many fragments of longbones measured about 1.5-2 in which
may indicate their use in cooking baskets. The low incidence of
cranial parts, teeth, and vertebrae suggests that hunted and
trapped mammals were often dismembered on the spot and only
the preferred edible parts were brought back to camp. The bones
(mostly white-tail deer) may have escaped taphonomic
destruction due to the adjacent shell deposits which raised the soil
pH (Amorosi 1984). Was this a food-preparation spot used during
processing activity or was it a separate activity area?
Unfortunately the lithic tools and antler tines were removed by
pothunters and not available for analysis.
A limited sample of shells tested for seasonality
suggested that oysters had been collected during all seasons
though predominantly in fall (Custer 1988:75). These data would
agree with several others cited by Lavin who concluded that
"different geographic regions may promote distinctive cultural
adaptations with different scheduling cycles" (Lavin 1991:84).
This archaeological site of almost one acre (0.4 ha) was
investigated by contract archaeologists in response to SEQRA
requirements (Roberts 1991). Since that time new evidence has
emerged suggesting the need to explore this archaeological site as
a major shell midden location. Due to substantial pothunting, the
overburden of some middens was removed exposing sizable
accumulations and processing stations. None of the middens has
yet been measured by augering or other testing. The major shell
concentration is at the southwestern part of the site, but other
middens were located at the site elsewhere. A matter of great
concern is that the major shell area is being severely impacted by
erosion even more than by pothunting activity (Boesch 1990).
These shell accumulations are the second largest
remaining in the Hudson Valley. Here, too, the large diversity of
middens as to volume, density, random accumulation,
deterioration, artifacts, and age is striking. One large deposit,
which showed up during trenching, is a layer of approximately 40
cm depth and 15 m length (unknown width) in an east/west
direction. A radiocarbon date of 3590 ± 80 years B.P. on shell
(Table 1) verified the Archaic use of a nearby midden. At one of
the newly exposed processing middens oysters measuring
between 10 and 12.5 cm constitute about 50% of the total within
a few square meters. The valves are closely packed and show
little deterioration. Few artifacts and bones were encountered
within this mound. Small fire-cracked pebbles (3-4 cm) were
present within 15 cm of the yellow sand floor. An uprooted tree
in the mid-section of the site exposed a smaller midden of mostly
7.5-cm oysters with a fair portion of lithic debitage.
Settlement Considerations
Large scale processing (possibly for storage
or transport elsewhere) is quite a different
cultural activity than procurement for
immediate consumption. Evidence from
flotation of column samples strongly
indicates that both activities were being
undertaken at Wickers Creek [Moeller
1988:73].
Permanent human presence in the Archaic Hudson
Valley has not yet been demonstrated with certainty. Aboriginal
dwellers subsisted on fishing, hunting, and gathering, but the
proportional role of these activities is still unclear. Abundant
oyster beds and wildlife combined with a moderate climate may
have favored a form of sedentary lifeways which does not require
agriculture nor take the form of a village (Flannery 1972:24). A
prehistoric no-man's land rests between Archaic sites at Dobbs
Ferry and Staten Island. The numerous recorded shell deposits on
Manhattan seem to belong to later periods (Finch 1909). At Wave
Hill in the Riverdale section two shell midden sites yielded
Archaic projectile points (De Carlo 1989, personal
communication; Lenik 1992). At the foot of Dyckman Street in
Manhattan a large shell site that contained in its lowest layers
unpolished stone implements, bear, and elk bones was excavated
by Skinner (Bolton 1934:6). Other large shell accumulations
were found by the Dutch at an abandoned Indian locus on
Manhattan at Canal Street and the Bowery which they named
Kalch-Hook or shell-point (Finch 1909:67). These two sites have
not been definitely shown to be of Archaic origin.
The shift from shell disposal in large middens to
dumping of shells into pits probably signified the increasing
sedentary life of Hudson Indians. The shell pits contained bones,
potsherds, and
This sizable shellfish site at the Hudson would seem a
prime location for a shift of emphasis from hunting and foraging
to fishing. Previous excavations and flotation tests indicated
some evidence of fish bone at Wickers Creek (Moeller 1988;
Roberts et al. 1988). Several netsinkers were excavated. Three
stone gouges were reported found suggesting the fashioning of
dugouts. Two possible cultural manifestations resembling fish
effigies are still under investigation.
Despite the abundance of aquatic life from shad to
sturgeon, the evidence for fishing in the lower Hudson is poor
(Brumbach 1986). No canoes, nets, weirs, nor harpoons have so
far been found. Identification of netsinkers is often debatable.
There is a general lack of fishbone in shell heaps which has been
attributed to scavenger activities or the use of large grid screens
by excavators. The variable preservation of bone in shell middens
may be an additional factor, for while "the organic and inorganic
26
Fall 1993 No. 106
Table 1. Lower Hudson Valley Sites.
Table 2. Oyster Shell Heights from Lower Hudson Middens.
27
The Bulletin
sometimes burials of men or dogs. They were located close to
habitation and, when filled up, new pits had to be dug (Bolton
1976:118). Some sites have the earmarks of a transition period;
across the Sound from Pelham Bay Park at Port Washington a
large shell heap measured approximately 200 ft in diameter while
101 pits were nearby-some overlain by the shell mound (Bolton
1976; Finch 1909; Harrington 1909).
Further inland some Indians helped themselves
occasionally to oysters. At the Ossining Rockshelter 3 km east of
the river, "About 120 more or less intact oyster valves...were
found .... These shells must have been carried from the Hudson
River to the rockshelter" (Fiedel 1986:41). There is, however, no
evidence for such behavior on a scale rivaling the activities at
processing middens. Not all Archaic sites in the area contain any
shell, as for example the Winterich Site about 4 km south of
Croton (Brennan 1956:12). Such sites may have been base camps
or the recipients of smoked oyster meat through trading or
tribute.
Ordinarily shellfishers consumed or processed their
catch near the source but some bivalves have been excavated
upriver at the Bannerman Site far from the oyster beds at
Haverstraw Bay (Ceci 1984:70; Ritchie 1958:65). Ten kin away
at the North Bowdoin rockshelter another oyster shell deposit
was excavated (Funk 1989:71). Similar to those in the Ossining
Rock shelter, these deposits seem relatively small. The Archaic
dwellers may, have journeyed in dugouts to the oyster grounds to
engage in fishing or obtained the oysters through trading. There
is no certainty that the salinity of Hudson waters north of Bear
Mountain was ever adequate to pen-nit formation of oysterbeds.
The impressive number of shell accumulations at the
Hudson led many observers to believe that early Indians thrived
mainly on this food item. However, this view has been
challenged both by calorie estimates and as an overrepresentation
of shellfish in the archaeological record (Glassow 1988; White
1974). Other critical arguments cite studies of areas containing
"some of the largest and most densely concentrated prehistoric
shell mounds in the world" where the "relative annual
contribution of shellfood ranges between less than 5 percent to no
more than 20 percent" (Bailey 1978:39).
Hudson oysters were a dependable year-round food
supply but probably collected with varying intensity as other food
sources became available. Many small plant foods or small
bodied animals could be regularly obtained with relatively little
effort provided that adequate traps, nets, baskets, or weirs were
available (Butzer 1982:302; Speck 1946). The Hudson River had
been a well-stocked food pantry:
Processing Middens
The processing middens probably developed in tandem
with increasing sedentary life and fishing activities. "These shell
heaps are not piles of general camp refuse. They are the
accumulated discards of one activity only, the shucking of
oysters" (Brennan 1974:85). There were at least five such
accumulations which can at present be classified as processing
stations: at Wickers Creek, Kettle Rock, Hellgate, Piping Rock
and Dogan Point. They may have had a dual function. Indians
could have supplied base camps further inland with shucked and
smoked oyster meat, thus avoiding the transport of 90% of the
weight.
But processing stations may also be evidence for
exchange activities or tribute (Figure 1). Both objectives could
have been effective at various times. While there is no hard
evidence for trading of perishable material like foods in the
Northeast during the Archaic, there is ethnographic precedence
for barter of oysters among some West coast inhabitants (Kroeber
1960:110).
Each spring, as soon as the water temperature reached 40 shad
and other anadromous fish entered the river to spawn. Sturgeon grew to
enormous sizes, judging from the scutes found on Indian sites; indeed,
early records tell of sturgeon measuring fourteen to eighteen feet in length
[ Kraft 1983: 12]
It could be argued that oysters in the rich Hudson
Valley biome may have been more important to diet variety and
trading than for subsistence.
Figure 1. Sites in the Lower Hudson Valley. Schaper. July 1991.
28
Fall 1993 No. 106
On Long Island the Shinnecock Indians seemed to
have paid oyster meat as tribute to the Iroquois (Skinner
1909a:4). Black offers some evidence "which suggests that
native people preserved shellfish for trade to the interior"
(Black 1988:24), and Salwen reports on eastern
Massachusetts that
of one column sample at Wickers Creek contained 34 valves
of which 10 were left hand and 24 were right hand-a
substantial difference. The variance at the other four layers
(120 valves total) was from 2 to 4 units. Does this
lopsidedness indicate a working method? Were valves
removed for use as tools, or was it a fluke?
Shellfish-particularly oysters, hard- and softshell clams, and scallops-were an important food
resource.... Parties of inland people made
summer visits to the shore, where they collected
and dried shellfish to be carried home for winter
consumption [Salwen 1978:162].
C-14 Dating and Habitation
Prior to the development of scientific dating
methods, any contacts between Archaic groups could only be
surmised. However, more than forty radiocarbon dates
suggest that such contacts were feasible and likely (Table 1,
Figure 2). For example the overlapping periods between 5342
B.P. and 5293 B.P. attest that social and economic relations
were possible between inhabitants of four locations: Dogan
Point, Piping Rock, Wickers Creek, and Twombly Landing
(Figure 3). Croton may also qualify as the fifth locus because
it possessed abundant oyster supplies and lies geographically
snug between Dogan Point and Piping Rock. Unfortunately,
past archaeological digs from Croton produced only few C14 dates.
The scientific tests produced narrow time ranges
rather than precise dates to indicate simultaneous use of sites.
The actual site occupations could therefore have taken place
at identical times whenever the C-14 ranges overlap, but this
condition also allows for occupations to occur some years
apart. The feasibility that the same groups may have utilized
the various sites can also not be discounted. None of these
events has yet been tested (Ottaway 1987).
The acceptance of an Archaic age for Lower Hudson
middens troubled Custer who questioned the necessary
accuracy of radiocarbon testing of oystershell (Custer
1991:28). However,
The archaeological record displays very little
evidence for shellfish preservation in the Northeast. The post
holes excavated at Wickers Creek have not been definitely
identified as traces of drying racks (Roberts 1991:137-138).
By comparison,
prehistoric preservation and storage on the
Northwest coast are inferred from indirect
archaeological evidence such as large site
volumes, evidence of high population densities,
the presence of species known to have been
preserved during the ethnographic period, and
the presence of artifacts such as ground-slate
knives [Black 1988:23].
Shellfish processing is probably the earliest yearround mass production practiced by prehistoric huntergatherers. It seems plausible that the processing of large
quantities of oysters (collecting, shucking, smoking) could
have affected work techniques or the division of labor. For
example a fairly equal number of right and left valves occur
in shell heaps although the valves of the same oyster are
rarely found together, but the second layer
Figure 3. Hudson Valley radiocarbon date, - 2SD. Calibration
based on Stuiver, and Becker, 1987. University of
Washington Radiocarbon Calibration Program.
Figure 2. Hudson Valley radiocarbon dates - 3SD.
Calibration based on Stuiver, and Becker, 1987.University of
Washington Radiocarbon Calibration Program.
29
The Bulletin
an Archaic date of 7170 B.P. ± 225 years on shell in context
with a Neville point, excavated by Funk at the North Bowdoin
Rockshelter (Funk 1989:68-71), would back up Brennan's
date of 6950 B.P. from Dogan Point.
It was noted earlier that "extensive changes must be
made in the archaeologist's concepts of the Archaic Period.
All Archaic cultures are older than the carbon-14 dates have
indicated many by more than 600 years" (Dragoo 1974:27).
Height-Length Ratio
How did Hudson Indians gather oysters? Sand and
bed oysters would probably be handpicked at low tide or
scooped up. Channel oysters could be harvested from a
dugout or by diving. Reef oysters may be dislodged with
stone tools. These oyster types were classified by their
differential height/length ratios (Kent 1988:30) and would
generally reflect the corresponding collecting techniques.
A sample of 360 midden shells from seven locations
at the eastern Hudson shore were measured. The resulting
ratios for 95% of the total samples ranged between 1.3 and
2.0 and are appropriate for bed oysters living on mixed
muddy sand (Kent 1988:30). The oyster shells from Wickers
Creek which had been analyzed previously varied within their
three contexts but in these lots more sand than bed oysters
were present (Custer 1988). Such oysters "thrive well on
shore rocks and underwater structures which are left exposed
at low tide" (Galtsoff 1964:399).
The predominance of sand and bed oysters -probably
also indicative of shore conditions at the Lower Hudson River
suggests collecting by hand or scooping.
Figure 4. Shell height distribution in middens. Lower Hudson
Valley, 1991.
have risen about 3 m/1000 years between 8000 B.P. and 2500
B.P. in the Hudson-Long Island area and only 1 m/1000 years
after that to the present (Kellogg 1988; Oldale 1986). There
probably could have been some local variations; "different
shorelines were affected in quite different, or sometimes even
in opposite, ways" (Goldsmith 1992:29). The Hudson water
level may therefore have risen only about 3 mm/year which
would hardly be noticeable at the river banks as the tides
came and receded. Apparently the rise did not upset either
oysterbeds or shellfish collection since five C-14 dates on
shell indicate continuity (Table 1).
Oysters feed by opening their valves and permitting
circulating water to supply nutrients but they perish if covered
by mud or sediment. While several hurricanes caused such
devastation of oysterbeds in the Long Island Sound (Galtsoff
1964:440), the Hudson River is no such exposed body of
water. The fact that oysters were still harvested in the Hudson
throughout the Woodland periods would argue against a
substantial decrease of nutrients lasting during several
millennia of the Archaic.
The salinity levels even today range from about 20
per thousand at the river mouth to about 5 per thousand
around Peekskill. It would normally provide a viable habitat
for oysters were it not for pollution and other benefits of
civilization.
The Puzzling Height Discrepancies
The height of oyster shells varies widely within each
midden. The 355 valve samples averaged from 6.7 cm to 8.2
cm in height (Table 2, Figure 4). At Dogan Point the 572
shells averaged about 7.6 cm (Claassen 1987) and at Tellers
Point between 7.7 and 10.3 cm (Fiedel 1991:50). Thus the
height of about 1,000 valves registered below 12.5 cm.
However, the bivalves that Brennan excavated from the
bottom horizon of the Kettle Rock and Parham sites measured
IS-20 cm (Brennan 1962:138). Although he nicknamed them
"Giant Oysters," they are not genetically different but merely
surprisingly larger than the rest of excavated midden shells.
Likewise, Reginald Bolton found in 1932 at Throg's
Neck that "the shells of oysters increased in size in the lower
part of the pits, some specimens near the bottom being
upwards of seven inches in length" (Bolton 1976:119). The
question beckons why these sizes only appeared at a few
bottom strata and not also at higher levels of Hudson
middens.
Oyster growth is influenced by the changes of estuarian
environment, salinity, and nutrients. The sea level appears to
Only in exceptional cases is the circulation in an
estuary so impeded that stagnation and oxygen
deficiency develop and render the area
unsuitable for oyster growth and reproduction
[Galtsoff 1964:404].
The investigation must then turn to the biggest and
most successful predator: human beings.
30
Fall 1993 No. 106
Collecting the Oysters
largest oyster specimens when they collected them in the lower
Hudson. This practice may have become predominant soon after
the last "Giant Oysters" had been harvested.
The shell middens of Denmark reflect similar practices.
Ancient gatherers are believed to have waded onto the
shallow river edges to pick up oysters by hand or scoop them up.
They may also have employed dugouts. Such boats were used by
Indians for oyster fishing in Connecticut:
Examination of the mollusc shells has shown
that the biggest and most nourishing of these
species were deliberately chosen [Andersen
1989:21].
Without a load, such log dugouts would float in
three inches of water...and they drew only nine
inches loaded with a ton of oysters in the shell
[Gardner 1969:58].
An investigation of human-oyster interaction at St.
Mary's City in Maryland noted:
Although scoops, baskets or nets have not been found,
their perishable material probably did not survive (Speck 1946).
A few small shells (3-4 cm) found could account for such
equipment (Brennan 1981:45), although they may have been
brought to shore attached to larger valves. At Dogan Point many
of "these oyster valves were clustered when alive, as indicated by
smooth areas on an otherwise highly textured surface. Some
oysters were removed still attached to each other" (Claassen
1987). But the shells in the middens are generally found
unattached.
Fortunately, Brennan pursued forcefully his "Giant
Humans were having a pronounced effect on
oyster stocks by harvesting large numbers of
oysters. Under this scenario there would be an
inverse correlation between human population
densities and oyster size [Kent 1988:51].
The human population registered a marked increase
toward the end of the Archaic period.
In the two millennia following 3000 B.C.,
numerous Late Archaic phases have been
defined in New York, New England, and other
parts of the Northeast. During this period the
evidences of occupancy (such as number and
size of sites and amount of refuse) are
quantitatively far greater than those of the Early
and Middle Archaic periods [Funk 1978:27].
Oysters" as important markers.
There can be no doubt that valves size, when it is
average for the oyster population being exploited
is chronologically meaningful.... Fluctuations in
size may have been due to aboriginal exploitative
practices or to climate and geology [Brennan
1977a:1 27].
Just four bands of Indians camping or living 15 km
apart along the Hudson could have collected all bivalves
exceeding 45 in (10-12.5 cm) and thus kept the number of larger
specimens to zero. It seems reasonable to assume that the oysters
could have continued to grow had they not been removed from
their habitat. There are a fair amount of shells in middens
measuring 12-14 cm which might otherwise have joined
Brennan's Giant Oyster category (Figure 5).
The argument for selective gathering practice could be
supported by the following tests. If both - oysterbeds and people had been a continuous feature at the Hudson, then selective
harvesting of the shellfish could have kept valve sizes to those
now prevalent in the middens. The same result would have been
achieved if oyster beds waned and waxed but people were in the
Lower Hudson Valley on a permanent basis.
On the other hand, if intermittent migrations had been
the prevailing pattern of occupation, then shells ranging 6-8 in
(1620 cm) in height could be expected to show up in a variety of
midden strata. However, none has been reported found except
those at the bottom layers.
A decade later Fiedel proposed similar causes for
variations of shell sizes (Fiedel 1987:93).
The glaring discrepancy of two inches between shell
heights from middens and shell heights expected from
undisturbed oyster lifecycles appears to be the result of human
activity. It is suggested here that prehistoric River Indians
concentrated on the
Conclusions
The shell mounds retain information which suggests
certain aspects of Archaic lifeways although "we have no direct
knowledge of anything at all from the remote past. All that we do
know,
Figure 5. Oyster shell height in the Lower Hudson middens. A.
lour inch average; B. five inch largest (maximum); C. seven inch
or larger excavated by Brennan and Bolton.
31
The Bulletin
has to be wrested from the relics of that past by a process of
inference" (Renfrew 1984:4).
It has long been surmised that Algonquin-speaking
bands in the Hudson Valley had contacts with each other. The
radiocarbon data lends scientific relevance to such
probability. The data replace assumptions with specific
narrow time ranges within which such contacts could have
taken place.
Hunter-gatherers are often thought to have been
egalitarian groups that included equal access to resources and
participation in common decisions (Flanagan 1989; Paynter
1989). The large community fireplaces of later settlements at
Inwood and Throg's Neck may stem from cultural inertia of
an egalitarian past (Bolton 1976:116).
The oyster-processing sites probably had a dual
purpose. They could have functioned as "activity areas" for
their base camps or for production of oyster meat as an object
of barter.
Selective gathering of shellfish appears to have been
practiced among the Archaic inhabitants o f the Hudson Valley
landscape. This could reflect an adaptation superior in
technique to mere collecting of shellfish for survival.
Selectivity in collecting may also have tended to prevent
over-harvesting-whether or not it resulted from deliberate
human planning.
The comparative shell measurements can present
only indirect evidence, but if selective oyster harvesting
persisted for a lengthy period, then the figures suggest a
permanent human presence rather than sporadic visits by
mobile hunter-gatherer bands during the last two millennia of
the Archaic.
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Acknowledgments
I owe gratitude to a number of very special people
who encouraged me, helped me and held my hand as I
stumbled along, Professor Thomas H. McGovern at Hunter
College kindly pro vided invaluable guidance as well as the
MASCA calibrations and graphs. Barbara Buske enlightened
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36
Redefining Iron Awls and Vent Picks
Donald A. Rumrill, Van Epps-Hartley Chapter
Reviews of artifact assemblages coupled with new
information and insight occasionally reveal changes in
artifact typology and utilization. This paper explores the
possibility that some iron objects previously identified as
awls probably were originally intended for other specific
uses. These objects are known in snaplock -firearm studies
as vent picks, tools essential to constant weapons
maintenance. Various configurations of other similar iron
articles are also described with probable applications for
each.
have been fired in this manner, the barrel begins to foul,
i.e., has a build-up of black powder residue. If the barrel is
not then scoured of this constriction by the use of water
and a tool attached to the ramrod, another fired ball could
become wedged, sometimes with damage to the barrel and
sometimes too to the shooter.
The vent requires maintenance at the same time
with the use of a vent pick, a four-sided piece of iron
tapering to a point. If the vent fouls shut, the priming
powder ignites but does not set off the barrel charge. This
aborted gunfire is the origin of the phrase "flash in the
pan" given to any circumstance or person that creates
initial attention without any appreciable result. This writer
became aware of vent picks upon purchasing a versatile
flintlock tool known as a "gun hammer" (Figure 1 a-e) at
the colonial village at Williamsburg, Virginia. Its various
combinations include a worm to extract wedged lead balls
(Figure 1a), a screwdriver
When a snaplock-firearm mechanism is fired, the
spring-levered action of the cock causes its gunflint to
strike a steel frizzen, and the resulting sparks ignite the
powder in the priming pan. The fire travels through a hole
known as the "vent" in the breech of the gun barrel,
exploding the main powder charge and sending the
contained projectile load on its way. After several loads
Figure 1. a-e. gun hammer; f-k. awls; I. needle; m. straight pin; n-q. vent picks.
37
The Bulletin
(Figure 1b), a hammer for reworking gunflints, etc. (Figure
1c), and a vent pick (Figure 1d).
In May 1992, the writer was invited to meet with
Jan Piet Puype, Curator at the Leger Museum in Delft, The
Netherlands. at the Rochester Museum & Science Center
and bring along the more significant seventeenth-century
firearms artifacts from his Mohawk Indian site collection.
Also in attendance were four prominent avocational
archaeologists from the Norwich, New York, area: Richard
Hosbach, Daryl Wonderly, Gerald Hayes, and Francis
Hailey with their collections from Oneida Indian sites for
the same time period. Jan Puype identified each artifact as
to firelock type, the probable country of origin,
nomenclature, etc. The most astounding result of the
meeting, at least to this writer, is that the Mohawk material
had a few pieces from Spanish and English locks but the
majority were Dutch; the Oneida material was
preponderantly French.
The author also brought along several select
examples of iron "awls" with the specific intention of
questioning Jan Puype as to the possibility that they were
not awls at all but vent picks, since they had been collected
from sites that were liberally sprinkled with firearms parts.
Earlier dated sites without artifacts showing possession
and/or use of firearms did not, in fact, produce iron items
of these specific configurations. Jan Puype did agree that
they could very well have been originally intended for use
as vent picks.
References to vent picks are scarce except in
catalogs for modern black powder firearm enthusiasts.
T.M. Hamilton (1980:123, Figure 75, #6 and #7) depicts
two offset vent picks from a gunsmith's cache which he
labels "inletting floats." Jackson and Whitelaw (1923:6062), commenting on hand-held firearms, state that "the
extremity of the [gun] butt is usually fitted with a steel
picker to clear the touch hole."
On seventeenth-century Iroquois Indian sites
across New York State, fairly common finds have been
iron artifacts previously cataloged as iron awls. This
category then was subdivided into types such as tapered,
double tapered, and offset, and configured as square and
diamond shaped in cross section (Rumrill 1985, 1986).
Iron tools that probably could be designated as awls from
sites that do not have firearms evidence have distinctly
different shapes than vent picks. There are those with
round shanks and tapered, pointed ends (Figure lf-i) and
others with flattened shanks and tapered, pointed ends
(Figure 1j, k). There are also iron needles (Figure 1i) that
are distinguished by their flattened diamond shape cross
section, if the eye is missing for identification purposes.
As an example of artifact assemblage
differentiation, on the Rumrill-Naylor Site (Cnj 102) c.
1632-1646 (Rumrill 1985, 1988, 1991), a total of 350
small pointed iron artifacts were collected of which 312
were nails with heads. 16 nails without heads which
without question were not awls, 2 iron awls, 5 iron
needles, 1 iron straight pin (Figure 1m) and 24, in my
opinion, vent picks. Commonly, vent picks are 3-5 in long
and 1/8 to 5/32 in at their widest point regardless of
whether they are single tapered (Figure 1n), double tapered
(Figure lo), or offset (Figure 1p). Larger vent picks up to 6
in long and 1/4 in in width (Figure 1q) are conjectured as
serving the same purpose with larger ordnance. Doubletapered offset vent picks appear to have been heated to a
high enough temperature to have two close, opposing 90°
ends made at a center point rather than to have been two
separate pieces fuse-welded together.
There is little doubt that these tools probably saw
multiple uses by the Indians as awls, drills, reamers,
perforators, gravers, and other utilizations of earlier lithic
and bone adaptations. It is this writer's opinion that the iron
tool in question was manufactured with the intent of
purpose that they be used as vent picks for snaplock-type
firearms.
References Cited
Hamilton, T.M.
1980
Colonial Frontier-Guns. The Fur Press, Chadron,
Nebraska.
Jackson. Herbert J. and Charles E. Whitelaw
1923
European Hand Firearms of the Sixteenth,
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Bramhall
House, New York.
Rumrill, Donald A.
1985
An Interpretation and Analysis of the Seventeenth
Century Mohawk Nation: Its Chronology and
Movements. The Bulletin, Journal of the New
York State Archaeological Association 90:1-39.
1986
The Evolution of Firearms and Its Relationship to
Seventeenth Century Mohawk Chronological
Analysis. Paper presented at the NYSAA Annual
Conference, Middletown, New York.
1988
Art Form or Artifact Type? The Bulletin, Journal
of the New, York State Archaeological
Association 96:19-25.
1991
The Mohawk Glass Trade Bead Chronology: ca.
1560-1785. Beads, Journal of the Society of Bead
Researchers 3:5-
38
The Achievement Award
Charles M. Knoll (1958)
Louis A. Brennan (1960)
William A. Ritchie (1962)
Donald M. Lenig (1963)
Robert E. Funk (1977)
Thomas Grassmann O.F.M. (1970) Peter P. Pratt (1980)
Paul L. Weinman (1971)
Herbert C. Kraft (1989)
Fellows of the Association
Monte Bennett
James W. Bradley
Louis A. Brennan
William S. Cornwell
Dolores N. Elliott
William E. Engelbrecht
Lois M. Feister
Robert E. Funk
Thomas Grassmann O.F.M.
Alfred K. Guthe
Gilbert W. Hagerty
Charles F. Hayes III
Franklin J. Hesse
Richard E. Hosbach
Paul R. Huey
R. Arthur Johnson
Edward J. Kaeser
Herbert C. Kraft
Roy Latham
Lucianne Lavin
Donald M. Lenig
Edward J. Lenik
Julius Lopez
Richard L. McCarthy
James F. Pendergast
Peter P. Pratt
Robert Ricklis
William A. Ritchie
Bruce E. Rippeteau
Donald A. Rumrill
Bert Salwen
Harold Secor
Dean R. Snow
Audrey J. Sublett
James A. Tuck
Stanley G. Vanderlaan
Paul L. Weinman
Thomas P. Weinman
Marian E. White
Theodore Whitney
Charles F. Wray
Gordon K. Wright
Certificate of Merit
Thomas Amorosi
Roger Ashton
Charles A. Bello
Monte Bennett
Daniel M. Barber
Malcolm Booth
James W. Bradley
Art Carver
Gordon De Angelo
Elizabeth M. Dumont
Lewis Dumont
William F. Ehlers
Dolores N. Elliott
Garry A. Elliot
John Ferguson
Joan H. Geismar
Stanford J. Gibson
Gwyneth Gillette
Robert J. Gorall
R. Michael Gramly
George R. Hamell
Elaine Herold
Franklin J. Hesse
Richard E. Hosbach
Paul R. Huey
Albert D. La France
Kingston Larner
Edward J. Lenik
William D. Lipe
John H. McCashion
Dawn McMahon
Jay McMahon
Brian L. Nagel
39
Marjorie K. Pratt
Peter P. Pratt
Louis Raymond
Barbara Sciully
Harold Secor
Annette Silver
Mead Stapler
David W. Steadman
Marilyn C. Stewart
Neal L. Trubowitz
Charles E. Vandrei
James P. Walsh
George R. Walters
Beth Wellman
Henry P. Wemple
Roberta Wingerson
Stanley H. Wisniewski